CACI International Inc. History

Company Perspectives:

CACI's mission is to be the world leader in information technology and networld solutions. We deliver in-demand products and services--providing innovative solutions for Homeland Security, Systems integration, Network services, Information assurance, Intelligence services, Knowledge management, Modeling and simulation, Engineering and logistics. Our strength is developing superior IT solutions that evolve over time to ensure exceptional performance and outstanding client success. Through growth we provide opportunity for our people, create solutions for our clients and make good profits for our shareholders.

Key Dates:

1962:

California Analysis Center, Inc. is founded.

1968:

CACI goes public; revenues top $1 million.

1974:

A European headquarters is established.

1986:

The company is renamed CACI International Inc.

1995:

Revenues exceed $200 million.

2002:

The company's stock migrates from the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange.

2004:

Revenues exceed $1 billion.

Company History:

CACI International Inc. is a leading provider of informational technology (IT) services for the intelligence and defense community. The federal government accounts for 95 percent of the company's revenues. CACI is a world leader in technology systems, custom software, integration and operations, imaging and document management, simulation, and proprietary database and software products. Headquartered in the Washington, D.C., area, the company has more than 100 offices in the United States and western Europe. It has been a voracious acquirer, buying 29 companies in one twelve-year period.

CACI is a technological leader in the supply of automated information systems for state government management of vehicle registration, licensing and wheeled-vehicle revenue support, local government management of false emergency alarm billing systems, and housing registration systems. Other representative systems applications include airport and airspace traffic planning, ammunition management information systems, automated document and records management systems, automated procurement, business process re-engineering, business support systems, computer-aided logistics and data information systems, electronic commerce, executive decision support systems, imaging services, information management systems, legal systems and litigation support services, manufacturing requirements planning systems, marketing and customer database management systems, product data management, retail market modeling, simulation languages and derivative products, site location planning and analysis systems, software development and reuse, systems re-engineering, systems integration, and weapons systems and equipment configuration management systems.

CACI products are installed in more than 10,000 locations throughout the world and used in a wide variety of applications. Products include ACORN, a demographic information service that analyzes consumers according to the type of residential area in which they live and is used to identify prime prospects for all types of consumer goods and services; COMNET, a network simulation software product for communications engineers to study wide area networks (WANs) of satellites, land lines, switching systems and protocols; InSite, a marketing and demographics information system providing PC-based geographic information systems combining software, data, and mapping capabilities to enable planners to determine the location of retail outlets, branch networks, sales territories, potential customers, and competitors; MIRACLE, a financial accounting system; MODSIM, a simulation programming language for computer programming and graphics environments that provides an object-oriented approach to structuring software, providing an intuitive development framework for programmers and which allows code to be reused; NETWORK, a computer architecture simulation software program for engineers to study alternative combinations of computers and data storage devices; REenterprise, a technology management solution which combines proprietary methodologies and computer software to analyze and reconfigure an organization's business process; SIMFACTORY, a general factory simulator for factory planners to study alternative plant and equipment configurations; SIMOBJECT, a software framework for the reduction of time and cost in building simulation models; SIMPROCESS, an object-oriented analytical simulation software prototyping tool for business process re-engineering enabling managers to model a current business process and then explore alternative approaches before implementation; and SIMSCRIPT, a simulation programming language designed specifically for analysts to build computer-based representations of complex activities such as airways and airport traffic, maintenance procedures for fleets of ships, warfare studies of military equipment and tactics, and communications networks, among many others.

Formed in 1962

The company that would become CACI International was founded in Santa Monica by Herb Karr and Harry Markowitz as California Analysis Center, Inc. on July 17, 1962. The two men had helped develop the SIMSCRIPT, the first simulation programming language, at RAND Corporation.

After SIMSCRIPT was released to the public domain, Karr and Markowitz started CACI to provide support and training for the new programming language. Years later, the company's future leader, Dr. Jack J.P. London, told the Newcomen Society that CACI's first office consisted of a phone booth and a park bench.

CACI had revenues of $34,000 in its first year. In 1963, the company won a contract to design an inventory control simulation for the Navy's Ships Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

The company became one of the first to sell proprietary software with the 1965 release of Simscript 1.5. This was a compiler developed for translating SIMSCRIPT programs into assembly language for IBM's 7090/7094 computers.

The company was renamed Consolidated Analysis Centers Inc. in 1967 as it opened offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City. By this time, CACI had a second proprietary product, called QUICK QWERY, which was based on work for the U.S. Commerce Department. This represented a significant expansion of the company's capabilities into information processing systems.

CACI went public on August 15, 1968. Revenues exceeded $1 million for the year, and the company had grown to employ 40 people. Harry Markowitz left the company while Herb Karr became board chairman.

Expansion in the 1970s and 1980s

CACI released SIMSCRIPT II.5 in 1971. This would remain the leading simulation language for decades. Other key products evolved from the Commerce Department work. These included InSite and ACORN, programs to help businesses mine Census Bureau data.

The corporate headquarters were relocated to a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1972. By this time, the East Coast was accounting for 80 percent of revenues. The company's official name was abbreviated to CACI, Inc. in 1973. In 1974, CACI set up a European division with headquarters at The Hague and branches in London, Dublin, Milan, and Bermuda. Within three years, Europe was boasting $1 million of revenues.

CACI began contracting for the U.S. Department of Defense in the mid-1970s. Another important long-term relationship began in 1978 when CACI won its first contract with the U.S. Department of Justice.

By 1980, the company had revenues approaching $35 million and a staff of 1,000. Growth was accelerating, and revenues exceeded $100 million in 1983. In 1984, Dr. J.P. "Jack" London became the company's president and CEO. London had joined the company 12 years earlier. He would be named chairman following the death of Herb Karr in 1990.

London was credited with helping the company transition from sole source to competitive bidding for federal contracts in the mid-1980s. CACI was also entering new markets with state and provincial governments. It developed an IT system for motor vehicle departments, beginning with that of Alberta, Canada.

In October 1985, CACI was reorganized as a Delaware corporation. Through a merger in June 1986, CACI became the parent company of CACI Inc. and CACI N.V., a Netherlands corporation. It was renamed CACI International Inc. in December 1986.

The late 1980s saw CACI pioneering another IT field, electronic data interchange (EDI). It was also working on the military procurement system called SAACONS (Standard Army Automated Contracting System), later commercialized as SACONS-FEDERAL. Six years after helping the Navy monitor its ammunition inventories with bar codes, CACI introduced its own optical imaging systems for records management in 1988.

Networking in the 1990s

With the falloff in defense work facing contractors at the end of the Cold War, CEO Jack London told Investor's Business Daily, "We faced a traumatic crossroads for the company about where we would go in the future."

CACI chose to transform itself from a professional services firm to a prime contractor of IT systems, focusing on the emerging field of networking. It grew aggressively by acquisition, buying American Legal Systems Corp. for $2 million in July 1992. In December 1993, CACI purchased certain contracts and assets from the Government Services business of SofTech Inc. for $4.2 million. Pinpoint Analysis Ltd. and Miracle Products Ltd. were also acquired in the early 1990s.

In the 1990s, simulations became a powerful tool enabling people to visualize how new systems or processes will work prior to investing large amounts of capital and energy into them. One of the company's simulation clients has been the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The company provided modeling and simulation support for the Joint Warfare System (JWARS) development. This project simulates military campaigns to develop strategies for the most effective use of military forces and battlefield data. The company also defined and implemented the JWARS system architecture, provided software engineering expertise, and facilitated simulation and analytic interfaces between the services and the OSD.

In process re-engineering, the company analyzed current and proposed processes and systems, focusing on examining and implementing technology and system simulation for prediction and risk reduction. One of the company's clients in process re-engineering was the Arizona State Department of Liquor Licensing and Control. The company looked at all of the processes the department was using, determined the best re-engineering solution and implemented it, accurately predicting a 33 percent cost reduction in some processes and a 66 percent reduction in others. The company also supported the cost justification for implementation, predicted required staffing levels and increases in investigation work, and supported system sizing and technical architecture. In addition, CACI worked with the U.S. Navy to design a computer system to support concurrent, distributed document development such as text, graphics, email, and images in a secure environment. The system developed required geographical distribution over both LANs (local area computer networks) and WANs and logical distribution among storage devices. CACI engineers simulated the design in order to test it prior to development and implementation, identified bottlenecks and determined the number of communication lines needed at the sites.

Systems re-engineering involved modernizing a system by adding some new capabilities while retaining the best parts of the existing system. The company helped clients avoid costly new systems development and protected its current investments in technology. One of the company's clients in the area of systems re-engineering was Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Oregon. For Blue Cross, the company converted and migrated the claims information system to a distributed client/server computer platform with some enhancements. CACI produced the software re-engineering plan with tool and interface selections. During the conversion, the company developed an object-oriented reuse library which facilitated any future enhancements to be made, created a cost-effective solution to Year 2000 conversion, conducted comprehensive training for Blue Cross employees, and won the Innovator of the Year Award for methodology on this project.

Software reuse avoids reinventing the wheel when a government agency installs new technology. The company's software reuse programs have helped the government reuse as much software as possible, saving millions of dollars. One of the company's customers in this field was the U.S. Army's Sustaining Base Information Services. The company developed a reusable software module for budgeting, training, safety, and security across all U.S. Army posts. The module included data warehousing or migrating data from hundreds of existing databases, regardless of the source application or data characteristics, a breakthrough in reusable software that speeds migration and reduces software life-cycle costs while at the same time allowing existing technology to remain transferable to other projects.

The company specialized in processing huge numbers of documents so they can be indexed, sorted, searched, and retrieved. CACI integrated the legal process with the technology tools its commercial and government clients needed to manage their information requirements. CACI's main client in this field was the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The system focused on the DOJ litigation support and records management, and CACI won an award for the integrated document management system it created for the Army's Gulf War Declassification Project, which involved document receipt and logging that included bar-coding, document scanning and conversion to machine-readable format, document image processing, format conversion, classified and declassified electronic file-room storage, workload prioritization/keyword searching to identify health-related documents, document declassification support, and preparation and release of documents for distribution via the Internet. Any military person who served in the Gulf War and had health-related concerns, or anyone curious about investigating such matters, could gain access to the government's entire file of health-related Gulf War documents by accessing the Internet using only a conventional computer and a modem.

CACI had been supplying electronic commerce technologies to its government clients for over ten years. As the 20th century came to a close, the company moved towards the next step of taking its clients to electronic commerce via the Internet. One of the company's clients in this area was the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. CACI developed an electronic pharmaceutical catalog purchasing system with an Internet interface. In a strategic alliance with Ingram Micro, the company was also creating an electronic catalog of computer products for all government buyers and sellers.

CACI also developed complex product data management (PDM) systems for clients operating in geographically dispersed, global development environments. Internationally recognized commercial enterprises applied the company's PDM capabilities for both client and internal use. Unisys Corporation used C-GATE, a configuration management repository support for the U.S. Navy's Trident submarine navigational program, and utilized a streamlined client/server architecture to help migrate the navy systems to open environments. Teledyne used the same program, C-GATE, internally to help move mainframe-based processes to a paperless environment which easily tracked blueprints and other engineering documents online, enhancing access to such documents.

A Top Contractor in the Mid-1990s

Annual revenues exceeded $200 million in 1995. A number of publications ranked CACI as one of the top federal IT contractors. September 1995 saw the company purchasing all the outstanding stock of Automated Sciences Group Inc., a provider of information technology for engineering and scientific environmental services to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy, for $4.9 million in cash.

In January 1996, the company's subsidiary CACI Inc. purchased all of the outstanding stock of IMS Technologies Inc., a company which supplied information management for a variety of federal agencies, for $6.5 million. In October of that same year, the company acquired the business and certain net assets of Sunset Resources Inc., a company which provided engineering and information technology services to the U.S. Air Force and specialized in electronic data interchange, for $5.3 million in cash.

The diverse areas in which the company worked in the information technology market have helped it grow. Revenues continually climbed, from $145 million in 1993 to $245 million in 1996, with net income growth rising from $3 million in 1993 to $9.9 million in 1996. In 1997, the company's acquisition strategy included looking for strategic fits in government and commercial sectors and purchasing new and existing products and services, with a growth target of 15 percent through internal expansion as well as acquisitions.

In the 15 years from 1982 to 1997, the information technology industry grew from a $9 billion market to a $26 billion market. While IT spending in the defense market remained relatively stable, the commercial IT market tripled from $5 billion to just over $15 billion. CACI relied on a wide range of partners, vendors, and suppliers, which it considered "teammates." Some of the strategic alliances CACI made were with such companies as AT&T Global Information Solutions, IBM, Litton, Lockheed Martin, Lotus Development Corporation, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys. Incorporating a full range of commercial off-the-shelf computer hardware and software products as part of its "customer solution" program, CACI was able to design custom and proprietary IT systems for its clients. The company has continued to expand its portfolio of proprietary software and database products, offering marketing systems software and database products to clients who need systems and analysis for retail sales of consumer products, direct mail campaigns, and franchise or branch site location projects.

As the year 2000 approached with all its potential computer software problems, organizations turned to firms like CACI. In addition, the information technology industry continued to grow with new software and hardware products. With a 1997 backlog of approximately $1 billion, CACI was positioned to continue to grow as an industry leader.

January 1997 saw the company acquire Sales Performance Analysis Limited, a software development company, for $2.6 million. Government Systems, Inc. (GSI), a division of leading edge communications firm Infonet Services Corporation, was also acquired in 1997, as was Statistica, Inc.'s System Engineering Division, a developer of simulation-based manufacturing task trainers. U.K. database marketing software provider AnaData was acquired as well and renamed CACI Ltd.

CACI entered the intelligence community market in 1998 with the acquisition of QuesTech, Inc., later renamed CACI Technologies. Information Decision System was also acquired in 1998.

MapData was added in 1999. The company made a divestment late in the year, selling its Comnet Products Group to Michigan's Compuware Corp. for $40 million. By this time, according to the Washington Business Journal, CACI was the largest software developer in the Washington, D.C., area.

Still Growing in the 2000s

CACI's acquisition binge continued in February 2000, when it bought XEN Corp., another intelligence community specialist. Century Technologies, Inc. (CENTECH), a leading provider of electronic benefits transfer systems, was acquired the next month. The Special Projects division of Radian International, LLC, and network services provider N.E.T. Federal, Inc. were also added during the year. Digital Systems International, Inc. was acquired in 2001.

The Department of Defense accounted for more than half of CACI's revenues. CACI was poised to profit from the intensive IT demands of the homeland defense industry after 9/11. The company posted record revenues in 2001 ($564 million) and 2002 ($682 million) and showed no signs of slowing. In 2002, the company's shares migrated from the NASDAQ to the Big Board on the New York Stock Exchange. CACI then had about 5,000 employees at its 90 offices in the United States and Europe.

In 2002, the company acquired Condor Technology Solutions, Inc.'s Government Solutions Division for $16 million and the IT firm Acton Burnell, Inc. for $29 million. Another intelligence specialist, Premier Technology Group, Inc., was acquired for $49 million in 2003. Also purchased in 2003 were Applied Technology Solutions of Northern VA, Inc. for $13 million, C-Cubed Corporation, a producer of mobile command centers and reconnaissance equipment, for $36 million, and Britain's Rochester Information Systems, Ltd. for $2 million.

The acquisition of Premier brought with it a $500 million blanket U.S. Army contract that included, in addition to IT services, supplying interrogators at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. CACI was soon faced with a worldwide media frenzy after an early army report implicated one of its employees in the torture there. (CACI's larger rival Titan Corp. was also embroiled in the scandal.) In July 2004, another U.S. Army report cleared CACI's ten interrogators.

Revenues exceeded $1 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004. During the year, CACI bought MTL Systems Inc. ($4 million), CMS Information Services, Inc., and the Defense and Intelligence Group of AMS, Inc. (AMS-D&IG). The $413 million AMS-D&IG buy was considered the second-largest "big impact" government IT service deal of the year by Washington Technology.

Revenues were expected to be $1.5 billion for fiscal 2005. The company had previously stated the goal of reaching $2 billion in revenues by 2008.

Principal Subsidiaries: Automated Sciences Group, Inc.; CACI Dynamic Systems, Inc.; CACI Enterprise Solutions, Inc.; CACI Ltd. (United Kingdom); CACI Premier Technology, Inc.; CACI Systems and Technology Ltd. (Canada); CACI Technologies, Inc. (dba CACI Productions Group); CACI Inc.

Principal Competitors: Anteon International Corporation; Computer Sciences Corporation; General Dynamics Corporation; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Science Applications International Corporation; Titan Corporation.

Further Reading:

• Benesh, Peter, "Bad Publicity Doesn't Slow Military Supplier," Investor's Business Daily, October 14, 2004, p. A8.
• Bonasia, J., "CACI Goes Great Guns Amid Defense's Growth Plans," Investor's Business Daily, May 2, 2001, p. A4.
• Gerin, Roseanne, "How Do You Respond? Controversy and Scandal Can Put a Media Bull's-Eye on Government Contractors," Washington Technology, February 21, 2005, pp. 25ff.
• Jones, Jennifer, "CACI Enhances E-Commerce Image with New Software," Washington Business Journal, August 27, 1999, p. 6.
• Keri, Jonah, "CACI Int'l on the Offensive; Defense Firm Acquiring Rivals, Winning Contracts," Investor's Business Daily, May 9, 2005, p. B2.
• London, J.P., CACI: Creation of an Opportunity, New York: Newcomen Society of the United States, 2001.
• McCarthy, Ellen, "CACI Contract: From Supplies to Interrogation," Technews.com, May 17, 2004.
• Reddy, Anitha, "CACI Hungers to Reach the Top Tier," Technews.com, October 20, 2003.
• Tsao, Amy, "CACI: Wiping Off Abu Ghaib's Taint," BusinessWeek Online, August 18, 2004.
• Verton, Dan, "Army's Use of IT Contract to Hire Interrogators Questioned: Interior Department Audits $500M Blanket Agreement with CACI," Computerworld, May 31, 2004, pp. 1f.
• Wakeman, Nick, "More Suitors on CACI's Horizon," Washington Technology, January 10, 2000, p. 14.

Source: International Directory of Company Histories, Vol.72. St. James Press, 2005.