Army launches $5B IT-refresh contract vehicle
The Army opened a new contract vehicle to bidders Tuesday to replace its desktop and mobile computers — and it could be worth up to $5 billion over 10 years.
The service’s Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions program and the Army Contracting Command have launched a request for proposals on the Army Desktop and Mobile Computing-3 contract to acquire a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf computers and devices.
The Army intends to make at least eight awards on the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle, which features one five-year base and another five-year option for extension, according to the RFP. Five of those spots will be reserved for small businesses.
Specifically, the branch is looking for vendors who offer “desktop computers, integrated desktop computers, workstations, electronic displays, notebooks, tablet computers, slates, thin clients, ultra-thin clients, printers and multifunction devices” to run the Army’s Golden Master operating system and suite of applications.
Meanwhile, the entire Defense Department has been tasked with moving to Microsoft Windows 10 by the close of January 2017. While Windows 10 is currently part of only one of three versions of Golden Master, the Army said it is tentatively set to update that sometime this month.
[Read more: Pentagon CIO: Services all in agreement on Windows 10 goal]
ADMC-3 is meant to serve as the “overarching procurement vehicle for the Army Consolidated Buy,” a servicewide IT procurement program to reduce the Army’s IT costs and standardize the enterprise, according to the solicitation. Army’s needs for other IT equipment, like infrastructure hardware, servers and office networking, are supported by the recently awarded $5 billion IT Enterprise Solutions-3 Hardware program.
Other Defense Department entities and federal agencies are allowed to purchase from the ADMC-3 contract.
As its name suggests, this contract is the follow-on, preceded by the Army Desktop and Mobile Computing-2 contract, which also had a $5 billion ceiling and 10-year performance period beginning April 2006. The vehicle was set to expire earlier this April but was extended until Oct. 23, 2017.
That contract included “commodity purchases of commercial off-the-shelf desktops, notebooks, ruggedized and semi-ruggedized devices, personal digital assistants, printers, scanners, power supplies, displays, video teleconferencing equipment (VTC), digital cameras, displays, transit cases and related accessories and upgrades.”
The Army awarded ADMC-2 contracts to Telos, Dell, CDW-G, Hewlett Packard, ITG, Transource, Emtec Federal and NCS.
