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DoD Gives Six Firms $3.2B In Contracts For Microsoft Products
Joseph F. Kovar
Six major government solution providers were awarded multiple-award, firm-fixed-price blanket purchases agreements for Microsoft software licenses and subscriptions by the U.S. Department of Defense for the Navy.
The contracts, worth an overall estimated value of $3.17 billion, are aimed at providing "commercially available Microsoft brand name perpetual software licenses and annual subscriptions" for worldwide activities of the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. intelligence community, and the U.S. Coast Guard, the DoD said Thursday in a statement.
Winning the awards under the blanket purchase agreements under the General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule are CDWG Government, Vernon Hills, Ill; Dell Federal Systems, Round Rock, Texas; GovConnection, Rockville, Md.; Insight Public Sector, Chantilly, Va.; Minburn Technology Group, Great Falls, Va.; and SHI International, Somerset, N.J.
[Related: Oracle's JEDI Cloud Contract Protest Shot Down By GAO]
None of the six solution providers replied to CRN requests for further information by press time.
The blanket purchase agreements, issued under the DoD Enterprise Software Initiative, call for the provisioning of "commercial off-the-shelf products that will meet functional requirements for desktop software solutions, operating systems, virtualization, management tools, mobility, and software assurance," the DoD said.
The DoD Enterprise Software Initiative was started in 1998 by DoD chief information officers to save time and money on commercial software. It includes a team of software product managers who consolidate requirements and negotiate with commercial software, hardware, and IT providers.
The DoD estimates the organization has achieved cost avoidance of over $3 billion off prices established on the GSA Federal Supply Schedule as a result of negotiated discounts of up to 86 percent off list prices.
The new contracts call for delivery over a period of 10 years, from Nov. 29, 2018 through Nov. 27, 2028.
The DoD solicited proposal from 895 potential vendors, of whom only six responded with proposals.
