Treasury taps Telos for TDPI

The Treasury Department last week chose Telos Corp. to supply Microsoft Corp. Windows NT-based workstations and servers to its bureaus under a one-year blanket purchase agreement.

The award is the second of nine BPAs the department intends to sign as part of its Treasury Distributed Processing Infrastructure program. Keith Holman the TDPI trail boss with the Internal Revenue Service which runs the program said there is no official estimate of how much may be purchased through the contract although Telos estimates sales may total about $18 million.

Holman said the IRS chose Telos from a list of 10 competitors because it could meet the department's requirements using its current General Services Administration multiple-award schedule contract and "it had a very good price."

Telos will provide Intel Corp.-based workstations and servers from Digital Equipment Corp. notebooks by Metrobook Computer Corp. Lexmark International Inc. printers and storage equipment from Exabyte Corp. and MaxOptix Corp.

Because the IRS recently chose NT as the standard operating system for its office networks the agency may purchase more NT products than it has in the past Holman said. "It depends how much money we get " he said.Because the IRS which is expected to be Telos' biggest customer is working on a new modernization strategy "a lot of things could be put on hold " suggested Bob Dornan senior vice president of Federal Sources Inc. Telos "could have worked real hard to get a hunting license where there's no gain " he said.

"With any [indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract] there's an uncertainty factor " said Mark Samblanet Telos' program manager. But he expects the IRS to buy the systems because they "are compatible with everything they are going to [and] they are upgrading their hardware infrastructure out of necessity."

IRS buyers will be required to consider making their purchases from Telos but other Treasury bureaus will not have to look at the vehicle. Although the BPA could be extended beyond the one-year time period set in the agreement Holman stressed that the contract is a "pilot program " and the agency would have to evaluate how well this acquisition method works.

TDPI is the follow-on to the Treasury Multiuser Acquisition Contract which expired last week. The first BPA under the program went to Sylvest Management Systems Corp. for Unix-based equipment. Four BPAs for communications hardware and three agreements for database management systems are due later this month.