Adacel flying high for another $21m

Melbourne aviation applications vendor Adacel Technologies has added $21 million in software support to a contract with Lockheed Martin, hard on the heels of its $27.3 million Christmas deal with the US Air Force.
 
Silvio Salom, managing director at Adacel, said the company would provide development support until 2006 for its own Unix-based Aurora air traffic management software in the deal, extending an initial $27 million contract for management and deployment of Adacel systems signed in 2001.
 
The extension would also involve Adacel supporting other, third-party, air traffic management applications for Lockheed Martin, he said.
 
'All of the air traffic coming into or out of the US ... will be controlled using Aurora, and that should go live by the middle of this year,' Salom said.
 
He said the Melbourne company had some 200 software engineers spread across its offices in Orlando in the US state of Florida, and Montreal in Canada.

However, Adacel used a distributed software development model so some staff worked on the Lockheed contracts from Australia, he added.
 
'It's more software development and engineering as opposed to software maintenance,' Salom said.
 
He said the company -- which has 350 staff in total, based across Melbourne, Canberra, the two North American sites and Manchester in the UK -- had held its own in the industry against 'very large multinational' competitors.
 
'We have very strong expertise in this market and that's why Lockheed approached us,' Salom said. '[And] in supplying simulation to air traffic control, we have 100 percent of the US market and about 50 to 60 percent of the rest of the world and that's growing year on year.'
 
The Lockheed deal could open doors for Adacel in other specialised aviation software areas -- including the US' burgeoning homeland security initiatives. 'The division we work with in Lockheed, that handles that,' he said.
 
Adacel has just announced a $27.3 million deal to supply 42 air traffic control tower simulation systems to the US Air Force. The deal is the second stage of a simulation systems program for which Adacel was selected in 2002.
 
Up to 94 simulators and system support until 2011 were expected to be deployed in that $100 million program.

ASX-listed Adacel develops and provides simulation systems for air traffic control training, research defence training and corporate e-learning.
 
It also has a portfolio of business software applications for electronic data management and commerce and has alliances with companies such as Intel and Getronics.