OM is gearing up to accommodate its growing Global Services business, which provides management services and hosting facilities for the financial services and energy industries. Earlier this year, OM acquired Hostmark, Sweden's most advanced data center, and OM is currently building new facilities in Sydney, Australia. The Berkley Heights center will be a 24x7 operation.
"Our goal is to be the outsourcing partner of choice for cost effective and reliable operations of mission critical services to finance and energy markets worldwide," said Carl-Magnus Hallberg, President, Global Services for OM. "Our new Berkley Heights center adds to our existing strengths overseas and puts us in a position to pursue that goal."
OM expanded it's Global Services offering in the late fall 2001 with the goal of providing management services and hosting for applications that support the entire transaction chain and for which uptime is critical. Today, Global Services operates 13 exchanges for customers worldwide and has entered into an extensive agreement to run the core clearing technology and operational support functions for the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE). OM has 250 employees worldwide within Global Services and maintains 24-hour operations and support services in Stockholm, New York and Sydney.
"It's a known fact that it costs less to outsource than to develop and maintain operations in-house, and, as a result, outsourcing has become a hot growth area," said Michael Healey, General Manager for Global Services in the U.S. for OM. "OM is the largest exchange operator in the world today. We strongly believe that financial firms and energy companies will want to take advantage of OM's existing infrastructure and our expertise in running complex operations. We intend to aggressively seek their business."
In addition to management services and hosting, OM intends to offer business continuity services to both new and existing customers. OM expects the Berkley Heights center to be fully functional by the fourth quarter of 2002.
