SunGard/AvantGard, the world's largest supplier of treasuryworkstations, announced last Friday that it had reached anagreement with XRT Corp., a subsidiary of France's Cerg Finance, toacquire XRT's two high-end workstation brands, TWS and Globe$. Withthat move, acquisition-happy SunGard, with headquarters inCalabasas, Calif., has again bought an erstwhile rival to expandits portfolio of treasury workstation products, shrinking thenumber of vendors while enhancing the potential of investment inupgrades.

While SunGard technically bought the U.S., German and Belgiansubsidiaries of XRT, it actually acquired the TWS and Globe$brands–XRT's high-end treasury workstation products, their customerbase and the rights to market those products anywhere in the world,explains Ken Dummitt, president of SunGard/AvantGard. According toDummitt, SunGard secured three valuable assets in the deal: aprestigious portfolio of customers, a staff of talented people andgood products that “complement our present offerings.” While hesuggests that SunGard is likely to stretch its AvantGardinfrastructure umbrella to cover the new XRT products, he admits,“We know and respect those products from competing against them.You don't learn everything about a new product until you get underthe covers with it. But at this point, we see the XRT products asfilling in gaps among our other AvantGard products.” With theselatest additions, “those gaps in our treasury applications arefilled,” he adds.

Now, SunGard is focused on expanding its AvantGard footprintinto the payment space beyond treasury operations and isconsidering a range of buy-versus-build decisions about how toexpand that offering, Dummitt explains.