MARIETTA, Ga.--Mid South Security, an installation firm with a UL-listed central station, announced this week the acquisition of Hi-Tech Security Systems, a small firm based in Dalton, Ga. Ronnie Joe Davis, founder of Hi-Tech, is retiring from the industry.

Hi-Tech comes with 350 accounts, said Mid South president Frank Basile, and complements the company's B-Safe office in Dalton, which Mid South acquired four years ago. "We'll just put out information with a newspaper ad and a direct mailing saying we've merged B-Safe and Hi-Tech together to create an old, experienced and strong alarm company." Combined, the two have been in business roughly 50 years.

Mid South now employs roughly 45, and also keeps a commercial fire business in Sarasota, Fla., called Fire1. The firm is between 8,000 and 10,000 accounts, roughly half of them commercial. The Hi-Tech accounts are about 60 percent commercial.

Basile said his company's differentiator in the suburban Atlanta market is his relationship with AES, 500 of whose radio back-up units Mid South has put out in the field in the last few years.