SunGard is a Fortune 500 company (ranked 472 as of 2008),[1] based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, which provides software and services to education, financial services, and public sector organizations. It was formed in 1983, as a spin-off of the computer services division of Sun Oil Company, during a period of low crude oil prices. The company has more than 25,000 customers in more than fifty countries. The name of the company originally was an initialism which stood for Sun Guaranteed Access to Recovered Data, a reference to the disaster recovery business it helped pioneer.
Business
SunGard is comprised of four businesses: availability services, financial systems, higher education, and public sector. Each group provides information technology support services, infrastructure, software, and processing solutions. The company's software and processing solutions help execute stock market trades, perform risk management, and keep records for banks, investment managers, mutual funds, brokerage firms, and investment advisers. Its products also include wealth management systems, treasury management systems, and accounting systems for benefits and insurance.
As of January 2007, SunGard systems manage more than $25 trillion in investment assets and process more than five million trades a day.
Acquisitions
SunGard has historically grown by acquisition. Past mergers include Strohl Systems, Comdisco Continuity Services, and Guardian iT PLC on the availability side, SCT on the higher education side, and Front Arena, Martini, Monis, APT, Reech, Phase 3 Systems, Infinity, FDP, and Opus on the (primarily financial) software and processing side. SunGard has completed more than 150 acquisitions over the past 20 years.
Buyout
Formerly listed on the NYSE (ticker symbol SDS), on August 11, 2005 the company was acquired by a consortium of seven private equity investment firms in a transaction valued at $11.3 billion. The partners in the acquisition are Silver Lake Partners, Bain Capital, Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Providence Equity Partners, and Texas Pacific Group. There had been plans to separate the availability and processing businesses, but the new owners have not carried this forward.
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