Sylvest claims first TDPI pact

In the first of a series of awards the Treasury Department has selected Sylvest Management Systems Corp. to provide Unix-based workstations and servers under its Treasury Distributed Processing Infrastructure (TDPI) program the follow-on to the expiring Treasury Multiuser Acquisition Contract.

The still-to-be-signed contract will be a blanket purchase agreement established through the General Services Administration schedule. Rene LaVigne vice president of Sylvest's federal business division estimated the value of the BPA at $300 million to $500 million. "This is our largest win " LaVigne said.

Sylvest's Treasury BPA will replace the workstation and server component of TMAC which will expire in June. On TDPI Sylvest will supply hardware from Sun Microsystems Inc. including that company's Ultra workstations Ultra Enterprise servers and SunSPARC workgroup network servers. John Leahy group manager of government affairs at Sun Federal said his company could generate $200 million in sales under the contract based on an overall value of $500 million. "We think the opportunity is very significant " Leahy said.

Some industry observers however believe revenue projections cannot be guaranteed in light of the Internal Revenue Service's troubled Tax Systems Modernization. Congressional support - and therefore funding - is difficult to predict noted Bob Dornan senior vice president of Federal Sources Inc.

But even so "[Treasury] still needs to replace equipment " Dornan added.Treasury officials were not available for comment last week.

In addition to its potential size TDPI also is notable for its procurement method. With TDPI Treasury scrapped traditional procurement methods in favor of the BPA approach. This allowed it to focus on technology requirements and vendor capabilities rather than on the mechanics of conducting an acquisition LaVigne said. "This is precedent-setting " he said adding that TDPI will influence other major information technology programs this year and next.

Treasury plans to award seven or eight more BPA-style contracts under TDPI for product categories including Microsoft Corp.'s Win-32-based hardware communications hardware power equipment and database management software.

LaVigne said TDPI's "solution-oriented" approach makes the program stand out among BPAs. In addition to Sun hardware Sylvest will provide software development and network management tools from Hewlett-Packard Co. printers from Lexmark International Inc. storage systems from Andataco and systems management software from Platinum Technology Inc. Sylvest also will provide design integration integration and other services on its BPA LaVigne said.

Sylvest's bidding team was selected from a field that featured a number of resellers and workstation vendors including Digital Equipment Corp. Hewlett-Packard Government Micro Resources Inc. and Telos Corp. industry sources said.