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Chantilly, Va. - March 22, 2010 - For the second half of 2009, Meridian Knowledge Solutions achieved consecutive quarters of increased revenue and earnings. The software maker's third- and fourth-quarter results helped Meridian and its parent company Visionary Integration Professionals (VIP) end 2009 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.80 percent.

Meridian's flagship product is the Meridian Global LMS, a learning management system for distributing knowledge and sharpening business skills via the Internet.

"The latter half of 2009 was one in which we increasingly won contracts with organizations looking to train their customers and business partners, instead of the traditional focus on training employees alone," said Roy Haythorn, executive vice president of operations for Meridian.

This bodes well for Meridian for two reasons. First, Meridian Global LMS is ideally suited to customer training because of its straightforward interface and ecommerce tools, which make it simple for employers to charge for training. Second, when Meridian sells an LMS for customer training, it generally equates to a larger population of learners and, consequently, more licenses than if it were training employees alone.

"Meridian has exceeded all of the 2009 targets we set, by a wide margin; we feel it's poised to deliver another record-setting performance in 2010," remarked Jonna Ward, president and founder of Visionary Integration Professionals. "I have increased Meridian's investment in R&D by more than 25 percent to insure its continued technology leadership."

New Customers
Among Meridian's new customers for the second half of 2009 are a:

• non-profit educational institution that has trained more than 150,000 healthcare professionals,


• world-famous research and development organization, which funds projects ranging from biology to neuroscience,


• pharmaceutical maker,


• global developer and implementer of skills management and training systems,


• consultancy providing products and services ranging from program management to engineering for the U.S. Department of Defense and other government agencies,


• 350,000-member association focused on financial certification training,


• benefits organization supporting development and educational needs of more than 80,000 workers, and


• federal agency focused on ensuring the safety of U.S. government personnel.

Along with winning a wide array of new contracts, Meridian has renewed and expanded several long-standing contracts with a number of U.S. Department of Defense agencies. During the second half of 2009, Meridian estimates that it added more than two million users of its LMS.

Business Highlights
During the third and fourth quarters, Meridian's tallied a 100 percent renewal rate among all its customers, reinforcing the software maker's reputation for customer loyalty.

Meridian expanded its Virtual Library of custom online courseware to 17,000 titles, which now arguably holds the LMS industry's largest selection of training courses. During the fourth quarter, Meridian continued to refine its Meridian Global LMS by enhancing functions for managing and selling online and classroom training to external audiences such as franchisees, members of trade associations, suppliers and distributors as well as labor unions.

In addition to increased revenue and a growing list of customers, Meridian enjoyed recognition worldwide from elearning executives, media and pundits for its products and services. Among the kudos Meridian received were the following:

• For the second consecutive year, readers of Elearning! Magazine gave Meridian Knowledge Solutions' Meridian Global LMS (Learning Management System) a Best of Elearning! Excellence Award in the category "Best Enterprise LMS,"


• listed in "visionaries" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems,


• ranked by IT Training magazine as a "Top-5 LMS provider," and


• named a "Top Training and Simulation Company" by Military Training Technology magazine.

For more information about Meridian, visit www.meridianksi.com.

To follow Meridian on Twitter, visit http://twitter.com/meridianks.