Diversification is very much the order of the day at SunGard Data Systems Inc, the Wayne, Pennsylvania disaster recovery pioneer. Sungard has been buying software companies, and for its latest catch, it has agreed in principle to acquire GMI Software Inc for about $30m in new Sungard shares. It does not expect the deal to have a material impact on its results for 1997. In software, SunGard has decided to specialize in securities applications and in July, it bought NCS Financial Systems Inc, a unit of National Computer Systems Inc that provides trust-accounting and corporate trust systems to financial institutions, for $95m (CI No 2,925). It subsequently bought the Securities Products Business unit of Checkfree Corp (CI No 2,985) and pensions administration software specialist Corbel & Co (CI No 3,026). The Chicago-based GMI specializes in applications supporting exchange-traded derivatives activity. GMI will be joining the SunGard Trading Systems Group, which currently comprises Front Capital Systems, Renaissance Software, SunGard Capital Markets and SunGard Futures Systems, and will work with SunGard Futures Systems.
