a firm which handles the IT needs of prestigious firms including Remy Cointreau USA and Norwegian Cruise Line – announced April 1 it is now a stand-alone company, following its split from SunGard Data Systems, Inc.

The new company, with annual revenues of approximately $1.4 billion and operations in 11 countries, will remain headquartered in Wayne. Sungard AS is a leading provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services and now hasits own board of directors and brand.

“Now that we are an independent firm, we have the flexibility to evolve our culture, our industry relationships and our investments to maximize our business and best serve customers,” Andrew A. Stern, chief executive officer, said in a news release.

“Today’s announcement is the next step towards creating a highly-focused IT services business that’s dedicated to providing world-class managed/availability services to our customer base,” Stern said. “All of us here at Sungard AS are very excited about the prospects to accelerate our growth, and we look forward to continue partnering with our customers to deliver the business outcomes they need.”

Remy Cointreau USA, an international luxury wine and spirits group, tapped Sungard AS to secure and update its IT system in 2009. Sungard AS also helped Norwegian Cruise Line build a resilient IT system to handle the cruise line’s busy reservation season.

For its part, SunGard Data Systems, Inc. is very upbeat about the tax-free split and the companies appear to be poised to divide and conquer the IT market. Russ Fradin, SunGard’s president and chief executive officer, thanked everyone who helped the companies reach a major milestone.

“We are entering a new era in SunGard’s history,” Fradin said. “Going forward, SunGard will be more focused than ever on providing leading software and processing solutions that meet the growing and evolving needs of financial industry clients around the world, as well as corporate treasury, energy, public sector and K-12 education clients.”

The updated Sungard AS brand identity includes a new logo representing dynamic strength. Sungard AS pioneered the concept of shared IT disaster recovery infrastructure more than 30 years ago, and plans to continue to leverage its “always on, always available” brand positioning. A forward-leaning angle in the logo conveys progression and growth, while a triangle in the logo represents stability and the support that the company will continue to provide its customers.

Sungard AS handles cloud, managed hosting and recovery services for more than 7,000 global customers.

“Our company will continue to focus investments in our newer service offerings, which include Enterprise Managed Services, Enterprise Cloud Services and Recovery as a Service and AssuranceCM, our next-generation business continuity management software offering,” Stern said.