Saber completes Covansys buy, wins two contracts

Saber Corp. has completed its $40 million acquisition of Covansys Corp.'s state and local government practice.

Portland, Ore.-based Saber announced its intent to buy, in cash, the state and local unit of Covansys, Columbus, Ohio, in March. The new unit will be integrated into Saber's consulting operations, company president and CEO Nitin Khanna said.

The move will increase Saber Consulting's number of employees from 250 to more than 600, and company revenues are expected to increase from $25 million in fiscal 2005 to a projected $100 million this year, the company said in a statement.

Saber was backed by Accel-KKR LLC of Menlo Park, Calif., a private equity company that made a large investment in Saber in January. Details of the investment were not made available.

Saber also announced that the company won a three-year, $10 million contract to modernize the IT systems that run the state of Vermont's Department of Motor Vehicles.

The contract call for Saber to automate Vermont's vehicle titling, registration, driver's license records management and payment functions. The state's mainframe-based system was implemented in the 1970s.

The new system will be built to give Vermont some flexibility to respond to legislative changes and federal mandates, Saber said in a statement.

The company also won a contract for an automated form-tracking system for the Arizona State Retirement System. The system will provide the state with a foundation to start converting 14 million pages of records stored on paper, microfilm and microfiche to an electronic format. The new system will allow for quicker access to documents, as well as simultaneous access by people in different areas. The value of the work was not released.

Integration with the state's existing Public Employee Retirement Information System was also part of the contract, Saber said.