On October 23, 2001, the Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Sungard Data Systems blocking the hotsite service from acquiring assets of Comdisco Inc, another hotsite service. This transaction would have put SunGard in the position of controlling two out of the three major suppliers of hotsite services. The services perform recovery of applications that are run on the largest data processing equipment, mainframe computers or high-end platforms run by companies such as IBM. The disaster recovery hotsites are owned and operated by a disaster recovery service provider that can usually recover mission-critical operations within 16 to 96 hours. .
The DOJ filed the antitrust lawsuit against SunGard because the purchase would have allowed the company to control two major moneymakers in the market. SunGard had total corporate revenues in excess of $1.6 billion in 2000, Comdisco revenues closed out at nearly $3.9 billion including $202 million for shared disaster recovery hotsite while Sungard had approximately $289 million for the sale of shared hotsite disaster recovery services. R. Hewitt Pate, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department's Antitrust Division stated that the purchase went through, customers would be paying higher prices while receiving lower quality service. With major companies vying for business in this field prices will remain competitive and customer service will have higher standards but if the purchase between SunGard and Comdisco takes place this will not be the case. Prices will rise, customer service will lack the personalized and professionalism of a competitive market. .
Hewlett Packard had agreed to purchase this part of Comdisco's business in October 2001 and a day later Comdisco filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Northern Illinois. The company's assets were to be sold at auction and the higher of two bids was SunGard with plans to close the transaction immediately after the bankruptcy court approves it.
