When the lights went out in Gotham on Thursday afternoon, Jim Simmons got busy. He's the CEO for availability systems at SunGard Data Systems (SDS ). Headquartered in Wayne, Pa., SunGard helps companies survive disasters. That means providing services ranging from . . .
When the lights went out in Gotham on Thursday afternoon, Jim Simmons got busy. He's the CEO for availability systems at SunGard Data Systems (SDS ). Headquartered in Wayne, Pa., SunGard helps companies survive disasters. That means providing services ranging from extensive business-continuity planning to specialized data backup and recovery services to wheeling in a mobile command center loaded with tech gear that can jump-start a corporate network and keep operational interruptions to a minimum.

Around the country, SunGard has dozens of business centers with empty seats and data hookups ready and waiting to host employees of stricken companies chased from their offices by disasters natural, man-made, or just plain mysterious -- like the Aug. 14 power meltdown. As of 10 p.m. that night, 34 SunGard customers had called to activate their disaster plans, and an additional 100 put SunGard on notice. It was the biggest demand Simmons had seen since Hurricane Floyd pounded the East Coast in September, 1999

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