Intelligent Decisions adds Netscape to GSA sked

Intelligent Decisions Inc., the Chantilly, Va.-based reseller and PC manufacturer, has signed an agreement with Netscape Communications Corp. to make Intelligent Decisions one of four companies that offer Netscape products on a General Services Administration schedule.

Intelligent Decisions will offer all of Netscape's software products and consulting services on its GSA schedule and on the National Institutes of Health's Electronic Computer Store II contract, said Lawrence Hamm, vice president of marketing and contracts at Intelligent Decisions.

Last year Netscape did about $50 million worth of business with the government, according to Peter Thorp, director of government operations at Netscape. Intelligent Decisions captured a portion of that business through competitively bid contracts but now broadens its opportunities by picking up the GSA schedule.

"Most people think of Netscape as a browser company, but [it has] a lot more," Hamm said.

Navigator, which Thorp said is used on about 70 percent of government desktops, is available for free, but the company has been successful in selling software that runs World Wide Web servers, enterprise servers and certificate servers that are used to authenticate e-mail addresses to the government, Thorp said.

Intelligent Decisions, a 10-year-old 8(a) company with 62 employees, joins BTG Inc., IntelliSys Technology Corp. and Softmart Inc. as GSA schedule resellers of Netscape products. With the exception of a three-month arrangement with BTG when Navigator first came out, Netscape has never done an exclusive deal with a reseller, Thorp said.

Intelligent Decisions has seen its revenue grow nearly 50 percent— from $42 million in 1996 to $60 million in 1997— largely through reselling workstations and servers from Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp. and IBM Corp., Hamm said.

The company has done business with the Justice Department, the State Department, the General Accounting Office, the Army, the Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency, Hamm said, adding that the company's goal is to triple its workstation and server sales, which were about 4,000 last year, and to expand the number of agencies to which it sells.

"We expect that we will get business in virtually every agency," he said. "Our customer base will grow as well as our software sales." Intelligent Decisions also announced the award of a contract to lease 650 desktop workstations under a three-year contract with GAO. The deal calls for Intelligent Decisions to deliver Compaq Deskpro workstations to six GAO locations throughout the United States, integrate the products and support them, Hamm said.