ERIM Acquires Vector Research

The Environmental Research Institute of Michigan has acquired Vector Research Inc. Both companies call Ann Arbor, Mich., home. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The new company will have $75 million in annual revenue. ERIM previously had revenues of $3 million to $5 million a year. Seventy-five percent of sales will come from government, and 25 percent will come from the commercial sector, a company spokesman said.

The new company's power lies in its ability to know how solutions developed for one customer, like the military health care system, might be quickly deployed to meet the needs of another, such as the automotive industry, said Ken Baker, ERIM's president and chief executive officer.

Both companies were spin-offs from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. ERIM is a 100-employee nonprofit technology organization with major contract activities in electronic commerce, sustainable development and advanced transportation. It has a strategic relationship with the University of Michigan to speed the deployment of research technologies into the commercial sector.

Vector Research is a privately held, high-end analysis and IT services firm with 350 employees in Ann Arbor, northern Virginia and San Antonio. Vector develops information systems and decision models for federal agencies such as the departments of Defense and Treasury and the states of Michigan, Texas and California. Its initial work focused on applying new simulation models for better understanding combat operations. It has since identified and deployed applications in health care and IT.

About 200 employees of the combined company will work in Washington, 30 will work in San Antonio and the rest in Michigan. Some of the company's work could lead to telemedicine initiatives, and improvement in mammograms and in the monitoring of water quality in the Great Lakes, an ERIM spokesman said.