Strengthening its presence in the Northeast and building synergies among its offices, the Initial Electronic Security Group, a division of Rentokil-Initial plc, Chicago, has acquired Barry Security Systems Inc. (BSSI), Tewksbury, Mass., an 18-year-old company with 34 employees and annual revenues of $6.3 million.

“We like to consider ourselves as a very good enterprise deliverer of services for companies that have widespread campus-type facilities,” explained Peter Barry, BSSI’s president. “We supply the expertise locally, as well as help manage the remote sites in the U.S. and outside the U.S., as far as their access control and asset protection systems go.”

Vertical markets in which BSSI is active include major international pharmaceutical companies like Biogen-Idec, Cambridge, Mass., and health care facilities.

“We service Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, one of the top hospitals in the city,” Barry related. “We’ve been handling all the security electronics there for the last four years. We were recently informed that we were awarded another hospital in the area. We would like to expand that marketplace.”

Health care is one of the areas in which the synergy with Initial was present, pointed out Kevin Robison, Initial’s president.

“The health care market is quite big for us in the Chicago and Danbury office, and we do Yale University Hospital out of the New Haven office,” Robison noted. “We work for several major health care providers in the Chicago area. That was one of the main synergies, that we both work in health care.”

A synergy between Initial and BSSI that they plan to develop is the university market. Another vertical market in which BSSI has been working is building management.

Ranked 23rd on this year’s SDM Top Systems Integrators Report, Initial Electronics is on track toward revenues this year of $28.5 million and a projected $32 million in 2007, Robison reported. Initial was featured on the cover of November’s SDM magazine as the 2006 Systems Integrator of the Year.

The acquisition adds a sixth regional office in Boston to Initial, which also has offices in Chicago, Baltimore, Indianapolis, New Haven, Conn., and Danbury, Conn.

BSSI’s region includes eastern Massachusetts, southern Maine and portions of New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, where BSSI has done joint work with Initial’s Hartford office.