Catalyst ditches recovery arm

IBM reseller Catalyst Solutions has sold its business continuity and disaster recovery operation to services firm Guardian IT for £26.6m to focus on its core business.

IBM reseller Catalyst Solutions has sold its business continuity and disaster recovery operation to services firm Guardian IT for £26.6m to focus on its core business.

The division provides continuity and recovery services to users of IBM mid-range servers. It reported turnover of £3.9m for the year ending 30 April and has fixed assets of £1.8m. It comes with an order book worth about £8m and more than 350 contracts. Under the agreement, Catalyst will still offer disaster recovery services to its clients, but Guardian IT will handle the fulfilment.

Alan Hixon, Catalyst chief executive, said his company had sold the unit because "disaster recovery was very much an add-on offering". He said the money from the acquisition will be used to bolster Catalyst's position as a solutions provider.

Hixon said the sale does not signal a cooling in Catalyst's traditionally close relationship with IBM, because most of its solutions were still centred around IBM services. "We're still one of IBM's largest server partners," he said. "A lot of our solutions are still very server-centric, but we increasingly have to offer broader solutions. We are not moving away from IBM, we are supplementing our broadbase of IBM services with offerings from other vendors."

Stephen Bean, group marketing director at Guardian IT, said the acquisition will allow the company to strengthen its offerings and its position in the north of England. "Today we have a very comprehensive platform in Unix and now IBM mid-range, and the office in Stockport will give us more geographical spread," he said.

He added that more acquisitions are likely to follow as Guardian IT seeks to consolidate its position.

Meanwhile, services company Anite has bought Datavance of France for FFr520.3m (£49.4m). Datavance provides consulting services to the banking and telecommunications sectors. Anite also said its results for the year to 30 April were in line with expectations, with strong trading in its travel and telecoms businesses.

First appeared in Computer Reseller News