ACS acquires Intellisource, clients

ACS Government Solutions Group will add NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration

to its portfolio of customers with its acquisition of the Intellisource

Group Inc., a deal formally announced Thursday.

ACS, which will end its fiscal year this month with $2 billion in revenue,

did not release terms of the deal, but Intellisource brings about $100 million

in annual revenue to the company. A better measure of the value of the

deal is in the new business Intellisource will bring, said Bill Woodard,

president of the Rockville, Md.-based ACS Government Solutions Group.

"It is to expand government services in seat management and enterprise outsourcing,"

Woodard said. "It's a classic case of doing an acquisition that brings new

customers to an organization."

There is virtually no customer overlap between ACS and Intellisource, Woodard

said.

Intellisource, the result of a 1998 merger between The Intellisource Group

and RMS Information Systems, made its name as the winner of the first Outsourcing

Desktop Initiative for NASA contract, under which they support 14,000 desktops

at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Intellisource is competing for a

larger ODIN contract to provide desktop services to four other NASA centers.

That award is expected July 10.

ACS supports about 150,000 desktops, Woodard said, but only 20,000 of those

are under outsourced environments such as ACS's contract with the Senate.

Intellisource specializes in outsourcing arrangements that include systems

engineering and services.

To meet the needs of its existing customers at NASA's Glenn Research Center

and ODIN customers at Goddard, Intellisource created the Intellicenter last

fall, which is a centralized 24-hour, seven-day-a-week help desk operated

by the company.

ACS operates a similar help desk for the Senate, and Woodard does not plan

to consolidate the two.

"I don't believe the answer is one big help desk in the sky to serve all

customers," Woodard said. "We are looking to evolve best practices from

each. They can give and take from each other."