Celebrating 30 Years: 1978 - 2008
Watch our 30th Anniversary video address, given by our Chairman, President and CEO, Dr. Edward H. Bersoff.
Full video transcript enclosed below:
"Hello, everyone. I'm privileged to join you in celebrating the 30th anniversary of Advanced Technology Systems. While the technology service sector is some sixty years old, not many companies of that era have survived to this day. IBM, CSC, SAIC and Mitre are among them and we join a select group in that regard. What sustains us is our customer relationships, some of whom we've had for nearly our entire 30 years. OUSD, HUD and Corps of Engineers are among them."
"I want to thank you, our employees, old and new, for your dedication to our customers' service, to their mission and to their futures. It's the key to our present history and it's the key to our own future. Now I want to take a moment to look back on market conditions at the time we were founded and offer some other facts and figures related to daily life back in those days since one out of six of you weren't even born when the company was founded."
"First, in 1978, Jimmy Carter was president. It was a time of relative peace until the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late in his term. In our target markets, annual outsourced government IT spending was less than $15 billion vs. the $70 billion it is today. It was the period between the Viet Nam war and the acceleration of the Cold War. Defense related spending was at one of its lowest points in history until the Reagan build up in the 1980s. So it was a tough time, in the beginning, for the founders of ATS."
"In the 1980s, the industry grew rapidly. So the Advanced Technology Systems founders timed their market entry exceedingly well. We entered the commercial market in the 1990s with the creation of Appix as outsourced government IT expenditure growth again leveled off after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War."
"Let's look for a moment at daily life in 1978, the year of our founding. Gas prices were on the rise. The gas lines of 1974 were behind us. But by the end of the year, oil prices were at an all time high, surpassed only by the oil prices of the last year or so. Popular movies of 1978 were Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars. Popular TV shows of the day included CHiPs, Happy Days, Charlie's Angels and Mork and Mindy. Music groups that were popular then included the Bee Gees, the Eagles with their Hotel California, Bruce Springsteen emerging as a new player, Kenny Rogers and Steve Martin with the song King Tut. The price of a stamp was 15 cents. The price of a gallon of gas was just 63 cents. The average annual income in those days was $17,000. And the average cost of a new house was $55,000. It was the year the first cell phone was introduced and it was the size of a shoe box."
"So our long term history as a company is marked by significant change over the last 30 years. The last year or so presented a period of even more dramatic change compressed into only 20 months. It was a year of extraordinary accomplishments all in our first year as an operating public company. We completed four acquisitions and five company integrations. We launched a rebranding campaign with a new tag line, logo, website and marketing materials. We achieved Sarbanes Oxley compliance in our first year as a public company in only a few months after we started. We achieved ISO 9000 certification. We won all of our re-competes. These indicators are proof of our ability to perform like our much larger peers and become a fast growing, highly competitive player in our industry."
"Now we must look to our future. The future for me, and for you I think, is about opportunity. I want to establish new programs to support your career development such as our Communities of Practice, certifications and other things. As we bid more new work, additional career opportunities will become available to you either in new roles with new contracts or new types of work or just by being part of a rapidly growing company."
"I'm excited about our future. I'm proud of our history. I look forward to joining you in our success in the years to come. Thank you very much."