Air Force taps five vendors for LAN/WAN deal

The Air Force Standard Systems Group on Wednesday awarded $140 million in blanket purchase agreements to five network products suppliers.

The BPAs, which have initial terms of two years, were issued to Federal Data Corp. (FDC), Greenbelt, Md.; Force 3 Inc., Crofton, Md.; GTSI, Chantilly, Va.; Unisys Corp., McLean, Va.; and World Wide Technology Inc., Herndon, Va.

The BPAs mark the first round of acquisitions under Block 2 of SSG's Information Technology Tools (IT2) acquisition strategy, according to an SSG announcement. IT2 is aimed at replacing a slew of indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts with BPA over five years. SSG began the IT2 initiative in March with BPAs covering desktops and peripherals, followed in April by a BPA for rugged portables. SSG recently awarded contracts for software development and maintenance. IT2 uses the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Schedule to reduce the amount of time it takes to purchase computers, servers and laptops. All Defense Department organizations authorized to place orders using a GSA schedule can use the BPAs.

SSG's Commercial Information Technology Product Area Directorate (CIT-PAD) expects to make several additional IT2 awards after Jan. 1 for software, workstations and network solutions, the SSG announcement stated.

The current list of CIT-PAD's IT2 Acquisitions are:

Desktops: Dell Computer Corp., Gateway Inc., Micron Electronics Inc. and CDW-G Inc. (selling Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. machines)

Printers: GTSI, Comark Federal Systems Inc. and Westwood Computer Corp.

Rugged Portables: Cytec Corp., GTSI and Inacom Government Systems Inc.

Software Development and Maintenance: Quality Research Inc., Centech Group Inc., RS Information Systems Inc. and Madison Research Corp.

Network Products: FDC, Force 3, GTSI, Unisys, World Wide Technology