UK IT services company Guardian IT Plc has paid 13.6m pounds ($21.7m) for Backupcentralen Infosec Holding AB, a Swedish company offering disaster recovery services. Guardian group finance director Peter Jakob said the company recognized a need for education in disaster recovery services among native Scandinavian corporations, as well as a demand for the same services in that region from its existing multinational customers. He regarded the UK’s lead over continental Europe in the discipline as a market opportunity. Jakob said the customers for Guardian’s three ‘workplace centers’ in the UK, at which it offers both the hardware and the place for IT staff to work in the event of a disaster at their own site, are from a wide variety of sectors. That said, the main one is the financial industry, responsible for about 20% of revenue, followed by local authorities. The previous owners of Backupcentralen were two venture capital companies, Foretagskapital AB and Atle AB.
