American Management Systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

American Management Systems (NASDAQ: 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.

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 D.C.-area personnel (approximately half of the worldwide staff) were based in Fairfax.

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 AMS website will direct users to the CGI site. CGI operates in the United States under the name CGI-AMS and is based in Fairfax, Virginia.

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

Founders