[Satellite TODAY 04-18-13] MetiSpace Technologies CEO Theresa Beech is confident that the company can make a big impact in the U.S. government market this year. GMV, the private multi-national firm, based in Madrid sold its U.S. institutional business to the GMV USA management team, while keeping its commercial space business. MetiSpace Technologies is an exclusive reseller for the United States aerospace institutional market for GMV’s satellite control and mission planning products.

    With the creation of MetiSpace Technologies, Beech is confident that the company will now be in a better position to pick-up U.S. government business as a result of not being foreign owned. “In the government sector, if you are a foreign owned business, the government has a variety of ways of creating firewalls, between the U.S. company and their foreign parents. Having foreign ownership makes doing business in the defence sector more challenging. We are now 100 percent U.S. owned so that challenge has been removed. This opens up new customers for us. I would expect to see start seeing the benefits this year. It is hard to say with government contracting, in terms of how long these things take. But, I would expect something this year. There are contracts that will be much more possible to us more than if we were foreign owned,” she says.

    The company will also not have the benefit anymore of being able to do commercial business either. While the U.S. government market could be seen as a tough place to do business, Beech is confident the business will grow this year. She says, “For the government business this year, we are expecting a high single-digit, low double digit growth this year. We are expecting the government business to increase. We have seen an immediate response now that we are a U.S owned and woman-owned small business. I would expect to see some contracts come in this year. It is difficult to estimate how much those contracts will be worth. We no longer havethe commercial revenue so that revenue stream is going down. The government stream is going up. It is difficult to judge right now, but we think it will go up.”

    In fact, current economic conditions could help a company like MetiSpace. “Our government customers are challenged to meet the same missions with less money. That is an ideal opportunity for a company like ours that offers robust, customizable COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) software that we customizeand adapt for each missionand each customer. The current environment is a huge opportunity for us to help customers meet their missionrequirements, with a quick turnaround in terms of schedule, as well as for a lower cost,” adds Beech.

    With a grounding and knowledge of the U.S government market, as well as better status being a U.S business as well as the status of being a woman-owned small business, Beech is optimistic the dealflow will be strong for the company. She says, “We have developed a reputation. We are continuing with the same team. We have an established track record in ground systems software development, command and control, planning and scheduling and flight dynamics which are niche capabilities in the industry, but they are very critical ones. They view us far more favorably. There are not that many women in the industry, and fewer that own companies. We see a lot of opportunities in the areas related to ground systems and engineering services with those. So, we see opportunities with the NASA/NOAA type of agencies as well as the Air Force and National Security.”