Guardian IT Plc, the UK-based disaster recover specialist, is one of the few companies in the industry reveling in the doom and gloom stories circulating about Y2K. Not that it expects to make any money or enhance its reputation out of Y2K disasters – if software isn’t compliant on its customers machines, the same faults will be evident on the mirror copies it keeps of their disks. Where Guardian feels that the massive publicity about the disastrous potential of Y2K is helpful is that it has forced many company directors to appreciate their business’ dependence on IT.
Guardian’s net income climbed 18.2% to 2.3m pounds ($3.6m) in the six months through June 30 on revenue up 43.3% at 19.6m pounds ($31.3m). Earnings per share were up 15.9% at 4.57 pence. While Guardian’s revenues have been bounding ahead, the company still feels that the penetration of disaster recovery systems is low. Yet disasters happen all the time. Guardian’s customers recorded 58 last year, lasting on average 19 days and 43 were reported in the first half of this year. And it wasn’t fires, floods or terrorism that did the damage. In almost 70% of incidents where Guardian’s customers were forced to use its back-up facilities, the reason was hardware failure.
Guardian, formed in 1995 in a management buyout from ICL Plc, has spent over 42m pounds ($67.2m) in acquisitions over the summer to build its position in Europe. It now claims to be either market leader or in the top three in the UK, France Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia. The market is highly fragmented with only IBM Corp having a universal presence. But one of the secrets of Guardian’s success is that, unlike IBM, it has built up a customer list of more than 1,600 by offering its facilities on a wider range of platforms than its competitors.
