Titan Corp. acquiring BTG Inc.

After nearly 20 years of serving the federal government information technology community, BTG Inc., an information systems and technical services company, announced Sept. 20 that it is being acquired by the Titan Corp.

Founded in 1982, BTG's areas of expertise include:

* Information collection and analysis.

* Warfare modeling and simulation.

* Software and systems integration.

* Network design and architecture.

* Information and network security.

Wil Williams, vice president of corporate communications at Titan, a global technology solutions company, said the acquisition will not affect government customers of either firm or result in any personnel cutbacks. Rather, it will enable Titan to pursuer larger government contracts, he said.

"There's very little overlap on this," Williams said. "Titan's overall capability in government IT has just expanded."

Eric DeMarco, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Titan, echoed those thoughts and said the deal would "expand Titan Systems' reach into the U.S. military and intelligence operations market and provide us with new opportunities to aggressively pursue new business."

BTG will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Titan Corp. and operationally will fall under Titan Systems Corp., Williams said.

Titan Systems Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Titan and is its largest business unit. It provides information solutions, system support and products for national defense agencies, including the deployment of information systems, systems engineering and support, and research and development.

Titan Systems government customers include the Army, the Navy, NASA and the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

"For our government customers it means that we have far more resources that we can bring to bear to do the work that we do," said Ed Bersoff, BTG's founder, president and chief executive officer. Right now, he said, that means bringing in people from all over the country to aid with the reconstruction work at the Pentagon.

"I was at the Pentagon today [Sept. 20] talking to other folks there and it's just amazing what they're doing to fix the place up and make it functional again," Bersoff said.Two BTG employees were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. "The folks we lost are always on our minds, but the [BTG staff] is working to make things right," Bersoff said.BTG's government customers include the Air Force, the Census Bureau, the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and many defense and intelligence customers.

The acquisition of BTG will mean that Titan Systems should have almost "$1.3 billion in revenues next year, with approximately $1 billion of that revenue generated by contracts for government information technology services and the remainder composed of product sales and government-funded research and development projects," said Gene Ray, chairman, president and CEO of San Diego-based Titan.

The deal is valued at about $141.9 million. The acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase and is expected to close by the end of 2001.

In other Titan Systems news, the company announced Sept. 17 that it has been awarded an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity program management support services blanket purchase agreement by the Army Communications-Electronics Command Acquisition Center. Titan Systems will provide an array of software acquisition management services and business process improvement consulting to the Program Executive Office Standard Army Management Information Systems.