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WAYNE - SunGard Data Systems Inc. has reorganized a business group that employs more than 1,500 in the area and expanded another, adding 1,200 local employees.
Both moves are aimed at spurring additional growth in the $3 billion company, which spends $200 million a year on research and development, a little less on capital expenditures and about $500 million a year on acquisitions.
SunGard started off the year by combining the three units in its Availability Services group, which helps businesses plan for, prepare for and get through events, including catastrophies, that take down their computer systems.
Customers drove the change.
"As three separate units with three separate presidents, that's not the way customers wanted to buy," said James Simmons, chief executive officer of Availability Services, which is based in the same office park as SunGard's corporate headquarters.
Last month, SunGard acquired Systems and Computer Technology Corp., which develops administr
ative software for colleges and universities, for $590 million in cash.
Upon completing the deal, SunGard renamed the group it put SCT in. The group had been called Other Businesses. SunGard renamed it Higher Education and Public Sector Systems. SunGard SCT, as it is now called, is the biggest business in the group. Its revenue was $270 million in its 2003 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. The rest of the group only accounted for $179 million of SunGard's revenue last year.
SunGard has already started expanding its presence in higher education. On March 1, it...