SunGard Availability Services (SAS) has approximately 8,000 information availability and business continuity clients, and has conducted more than 90,000 simulated recovery tests and over 1,100 actual recoveries, with a 100% success rate. SunGard has 2.5 million square feet in hardened facilities dedicated to business continuity with over 10,000 end-user recovery positions with operates in 55 cities in North America, UK and France. SunGard Availability Services also provides mobile data centers for on-site recovery.
Guardian (LSE:GRD) has quickly grown through acquisition into one of the leading providers of business continuity, data management and high availability IT services in Europe. Guardian operates from over 35 locations worldwide, with approximately 700,000 square feet of recovery facilities that support more than 2,700 customers and over 6,000 end-user recovery positions.
James L. Mann, SunGard's chairman and chief executive officer, stated, 'We are very pleased that the Guardian board of directors is recommending our offer to Guardian's shareholders. This transaction is an attractive opportunity for SunGard to strengthen its availability services business in Europe. Combining Guardian with SunGard Availability Services will create a business better able to serve customers in more geographic locations, offering them access to more facilities, platforms, network capacity and technical personnel.'
Keith Tilley, SunGard Availability Services' European managing director said 'if accepted, this offer will be good news for both SunGard Availability Services existing customers and Guardian iT’s customers. Both staff teams are very experienced, combined they will be able to offer enhanced customer service, and by building on each others infrastructure we will be able to extend our capabilities both technically and geographically.'
ABOUT SUNGARD AVAILABILITY SERVICES
SunGard Availability Services (SAS) is the leading provider of information availability services helping to ensure that more than 8,000 clients in North America and Europe have uninterrupted access to their business-critical information systems. With over 2 million square feet of hardened facilities, SAS offers a complete range of information availability services for more than 30 technology platforms, from 48 hour disaster recovery hotsites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure, co-location and electronic vaulting services. SunGard also provides technology and systems management services for application and data center outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software.
