Schlumberger to sell off disaster recovery arm

Schlumberger, newly bereft of its IT services wing Sema, looks like it could be shedding more of its tech divisions – with disaster recovery number one for the chop.

Schlumberger's disaster recovery business is a hangover from its acquisition of Sema, now owned by French firm Atos Origin, and is thought to be worth in the region of £120m. Atos Origin declined to buy the division when it acquired Sema and it's thought the sale will help Schlumberger to claw back some of the excess it paid when it bought Sema in 2001.

According to the Financial Times, Schlumberger has employed Deutsche Bank to find a buyer for its disaster recovery offshoot, whose customers include high profile financial players like the Bank of Scotland and JP Morgan. US business continuity firm SunGard and Hewlett-Packard are thought to be among the companies lining up to put their money on the table.

US disaster recovery firm SunGard has been on a European buying spree of late, while HP is looking to provide more diverse services, the FT reports.

Disaster recovery is shaping up to be a potential boom area for the future, with large swathes of business admitting they have no plans to in place to get their companies back on their feet following a terrorist attack, office fire or simply a clumsy employee. Big name vendors like Dell are already keen to get in on the disaster recovery act.