American Management Systems

Infobox defunct company
location=Faifax, VA
fate=Sold, defense related business to CACI, rest of the company to CGI Group
foundation=1970
defunct=2004

American Management Systems (previous NASDAQ symbol: AMSY) was founded in 1970 as a technology and management consulting firm. It was founded by a group of five former United States Department of Defense officials who worked under Robert McNamara in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The company grew to a size greater than nine thousand workers, with many offices in both the United States and other countries. At one point in the 1990s, one quarter of the company's revenue, albeit none of the profit, came from Europe. Much of its business was creating large computer systems for various government entities. It created a large accounting system for New York City during its recovery from its fiscal crisis in the late 1970s, and won the award for the United States Department of Defense Standard Procurement System in 1997.cite web
url=http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=1004
title=DefenseLink: Contracts for Monday, April 7, 1997
date=1997-04-07
accessdate=2008-03-07]

For the first 20+ years of its existence, the company was based in Arlington, Virginia on the banks of the Potomac River with a commanding view of Washington DC. In the early 1990s, AMS moved its corporate headquarters to Fairfax, Virginia. By the late 1990s, all AMS offices in Arlington were vacated and all Washington, D.C.-area personnel (approximately half of the worldwide staff) were based in Fairfax.

In December 2002, It sold its Global Energy Group to Bangalore, India-based Wipro Technologies. In 2004, several factors, most notably an inattentive Board Of Directors, a series of ineffective CEOs, and the senior executives' overall inability to adapt to new business models, combined to force it to be sold. CGI, a Canadian company, was the primary purchaser, getting the commercial business and all government business not related to national defense. The defense portion of AMS could not be sold to a company based outside the U.S. so that part of AMS was purchased by CACI. The AMS brand was retained by CGI and the [http://www.ams.com AMS website] will direct users to the CGI site. CGI's United States headquarters are in Fairfax, Virginia.

AMS in Europe

At the beginning of the 1990s, AMS provided the billing solution for an American Telephone Company Airtel. Following the expansion of the GSM standard in Europe, Airtel invested in a number of foreign GSM providers. This led to the expansion of the AMS billing solution, Spectrum 2000, into Europe. In 1992 AMS was in a unique position as provider of the billing system to the emerging mobile telco market in Europe; making AMS a major player in the European Market. AMS expanded into Portugal, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Poland. Despite this success, the company did not develop sufficient service delivery and business development units. Instead, it decided to commit to a huge (over 100M$) investment in the development of the sophisticated Customer Care and Billing System Tapestry for German fixed-wire telecom Arcor. Lack of commitment to marketing of this system contributed to the problems that led to significant layoffs in Europe in 2002. Furthermore AMS lost prestige when D1 (now known as T-Mobile) chose Amdocs for its billing solution, after AMS decided to abstand the new tender.

AMS 2002

In 2002, AMS had approximately 6300 employees, 986 million in revenue and 21 million in income and 51 offices worldwide.

Founders

* Ivan Selin
* Charles O. Rossotti
* Frank Nicolai
* Pat Gross
* Jan Lodal

Chief Executive Officers

* Ivan Selin - 1970 to late 1980s.
* Charles O. Rossotti - Late 1980s to Mid 1990s.
* Paul Brands - Mid 1990s to October 25, 2000.
* Bill Purdy (Interim) - October 26, 2000 to November 30, 2001.
* Alfred T. Mockett - December 1, 2001 to 2004.

References