IT Firm Lifts Off After Slow and Steady Climb

Over the past 25 years, Chevy Chase-based Abacus Technology has evolved slowly but deliberately from a one-man, one-contract transportation logistics consultancy to a 500-person communications and information technology firm with jobs in 12 countries.

Its next transition may not be so low-key.

On Oct. 1, Abacus officially becomes the primary information and communications contractor for NASA's Kennedy Space Center. On Oct. 8, Abacus will oversee the countdown for its first NASA space shuttle launch.

"You can feel the excitement on our staff," said Dennis J. Yee, Abacus founder and president.

NASA announced this month that Abacus won the contract, worth as much as $898 million over nine years, to provide voice communications, computer network services, space shuttle voice communications and flight checks to Houston. The previous contractor was InDyne of Reston.

Abacus "will also give us the personnel that will provide the NASA TV coverage of launches and pictures to the public of next-generation, new rockets and spacecraft," said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. NASA has a policy of not disclosing why a contractor's bid was accepted, he said.

The job will double Abacus's staff -- many new people have already been working on the project, Yee said -- and should boost its revenue, from the $60 million it has been hovering at for the past five or six years, to more than $100 million. It's a benchmark Yee has been aiming for since Abacus emerged from its early days as a firm designated 8(a), the Small Business Administration program that provides incentives and bidding advantages to fledgling businesses owned by women and minorities. His firm stayed in the program for the full nine years allowed, graduating in 1995 and slowly building capacity since, he said.

"My goal was not to be the fastest-growing 8(a) company or the largest, it was to figure out how to survive beyond," said Yee, who is Chinese American.

While 8(a) firms often aim to grow quickly, then sell for a hefty profit, Yee said that was never his intention. He follows in the footsteps of entrepreneurial parents, whom he remembers working always. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Yee would go to his father's laundry after school for dinner, then walk home and do his homework. His mother opened and operated about a half-dozen restaurants, including a high-end Chinese restaurant in 1957 and the first Chinese restaurant in Southampton on Long Island.

"If she opened one and it didn't work, she'd just get her act together and start another," Yee said.

Having seen the hard work that goes into creating a successful business, Yee said he decided to carefully manage risk, looking at all angles and calculating the pluses and minuses of a deal.

"We probably could have been a lot bigger a lot sooner, but my attitude is, what goes up can also come down," he said. "Firms that grow too quickly subject themselves to a lot of high volatility, and it could hurt them."

Yee, 58, said he plans to continue growing the company organically and has little interest in selling. That's like his mother, he said, who retired and immediately got another job, working at the 7-Eleven in Southampton.

"Retirement isn't really in my vocabulary," he said. "My attitude is that winning this contract is not the end of our path, but the beginning of the next phase."