Vega Group plc

Infobox Company
company_name = Vega Group PLC
company_
company_type = Public
foundation = 1978
location = Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK
key_people = Martin Blomley, COO
Ken Blyth, CFO
industry = Aerospace, Defence and Government
products = Consulting, Technology & Managed Solutions
revenue = profit GB £64.1 million (2007)cite web|url=http://www.vega-group.com/assets/documents/10000E65AnnualReport2007.pdf |title=Vega Annual Report & Accounts 2007 |format=PDF |work= |publisher=Vega Group PLC |pages=72 pages]
num_employees = profit 630
homepage = [http://www.vega-group.com www.vega-group.com]
footnotes =

Vega Group plc is part of the Finmeccanica Italian group. It is specialised in professional services providing consulting, technology and managed solutions.

Vega is named after the star Vega in the Lyra constellation, the star by which the brightness of other stars is measured.

History

Vega was founded in 1978 by a small group of engineers based at the European Space Operations Centre ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. They bid for and won a contract to provide satellite operations support to European Space Agency ESA missions, and Vega was formed.

Today, Vega still holds that original contract, which has been re-bid and re-won on a number of occasions. The company now has around 800 staff worldwide, with more than 300 working specifically in scientific, military and commercial Aerospace.

As Vega has grown, and its range of specialist consulting and technology services increased, it has found new opportunities where organisations face technologically sophisticated, people dependent, business-critical challenges, and so the company has diversified successfully into both the Defence and Government markets.

Vega floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1992 and was listed on the FTSE Fledgling Index (Software and Computer Services classification) and the FTSE techMark Index. Following floatation VEGA grew both organically and by acquisition. The most recent acquisitions include Anite Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG (2007) Anite Systems GmbH, a subsidiary of Anite Group plc (2004), and IT consultancy, Crew Services Ltd (1999).

In February 2008, Vega was delisted from the London Stock Exchange, following the acquisition of VEGA by Finmeccanica - Societa Per Azioni ("Finmeccanica").

Locations

UK
* Welwyn Garden City (Headquarters)
* Bristol

Germany
* Darmstadt

France
* Toulouse

Market Sectors

Vega operates across three main sectors:
* Aerospace
* Defence
* Government

Information of Note:
In 2006 Vega was awarded a GB £19m contract by Thales UK to deliver the through-life training solution for the UK Ministry of Defence (UK MoD)'s £800m watchkeeper Unmanned Air Vehicle (“UAV”) system. [ [http://www.shephard.co.uk/UVOnline/default.aspx?Action=-187126550&ID=eb6cfd85-0359-448c-a120-919dfd8fb5b0 UVOnline.com] ]

Vega remains to be actively involved with the European Space Agency (ESA) and has supported the majority of the agency's successful launches since 1978. This includes the recent launches of ESA's Venus Express and MetOp satellites. The company has also recently signed €7m contract with ESA's Directorate of Science Programmes (D/SCI) based at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC).

In 2006 the group was awarded a GB £4.6m contract from the UK MoD to provide ongoing architectural modelling capability. Architectural modelling is gaining significant momentum within the MoD, as it plays a vital role in the implementation of Network Enabled Capability (NEC) and the introduction of the MoD Architecture Framework (MODAF).

Framework Agreements
Vega is qualified under a variety of framework agreements, enabling agreements and Service Catalogues. The most significant of these are the Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Information and Communications Services (ICS) Catalogue and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) buyingsolutions' frameworks catalogue, Catalist.

Activities

Vega's capabilities are aggregated into six key service lines, which run horizontally throughout the above market sectors. They are:

* Capability Acquisition
* Human Performance Improvement
* Information Security
* Simulation and Technology Solutions
* Technology Support Services
* Science and Technology Research

Accreditations

Quality Assurance
Vega is certified to the internationally recognised Quality Management Standard, . In addition to this certification, Vega has adopted the software sector TickIT registration scheme.

Information Assurance

Vega is also certified (with SAI Gobal as the certification body) to the internationally recognised standard for Information Security . This certification was obtained in December 2006, with Vega being one of a small number of UK companies to certify against the new 27000 series of the standard.

CHECK

Vega is a CESG CHECK 'green light' company listed on [http://www.cesg.gov.uk CESG's website] , accredited to provide penetration testing services to UK government. Vega CHECK was jointly established by Kevin Sheldrake and James Wootton, both CHECK Team Leaders, who went on to launch the highly successful, specialist information security consultancy, [http://www.electriccat.co.uk Electric Cat] in 2004.

Environmental Management

Additionally, Vega is certifed to ISO 14000, environmental management.

References

External links

* [http://online.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk/news/index.html OGCbuying.solutions Website]
* [http://iso-17799.safemode.org ISO 17799 and ISO 27001 Wiki]
* [http://www.vega-group.com/assets/documents/10000E65AnnualReport2007.pdf Vega Group PLC Annual Report 2007]