Friday, May 16, 2008

SunGard buys Strohl Systems

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080515/neth122.html?.v=14


Reading between the lines of the May 15 PR Newswire release, it would seem this acquisition by SunGard - it never was called a merger - will enhance Sungard's soft business while being the kiss of death for SunGard's current software offering, Paragon. The only mention of that product was to state " both SunGard's Paragon and Strohl Systems' LDRPS will continue to be supported."

Strohl was acquired by SunGard's SunGard Availability Services. The deal will bring to SunGard "deep intellectual capital in business continuity including experienced developers and customer support professionals, and a dedicated software professional services organization and sales force that will continue to support existing customers and prospects," the release claimed.

SunGard a few years ago acquired Comdisco, theoretically a competitor. It was hardly a "marriage made in heaven" according to both former SunGard and former Comdisco personnel. (In most cases, the "former" are that way voluntarily.)

LDRPS in particular and the other lesser Strohl products probably will keep their product names, but "Strohl Systems" probably will be history in relative short order unless some "ex" Strohl folks can buy the name back from SunGard.

What will be interesting is to see how the mentality at SunGard - an InfoTech disaster recovery hot site vendor - will agree with Strohl's business continuity mentality.

Since I don't use either SunGard sites or Strohl software, the acquisition has zero impact on me, but I know - second hand - some of the Strohl folks and respect their knowledge.

It will be interesting to watch.

John Glenn, MBCI, SRP
Enterprise Risk Management/Business Continuity
http://johnglennmbci.com/
Planner @ JohnGlennMBCI.com

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