GSA adds hyperconverged infrastructure options to Schedule 70

The General Services Administration is looking to help agencies meet data center consolidation challenges under the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act by adding 10 hyperconverged infrastructure solutions to its IT Schedule 70 contract.

"The new cloud infrastructure solutions are another example of category management in action," said Kay Ely, assistant commissioner of GSA's Office of Information Technology Category. "Agencies have the option to purchase HCI as a hardware and software bundle or software only at very competitive prices."

The Army has seen some success in hyperconverged infrastructure, which combines the server and storage hardware into more compact, multipurpose boxes, shrinking the rack and lowering energy costs. Hyperconverged infrastructure can also support common software-as-a-service applications like email and other office functions. For agencies looking to reduce their data center footprint and prepare for a move to a public cloud, hyperconverged infrastructure can be a first step.

The award to Nutanix and Carasoft covers the basics of hyperconverged infrastructure applications and will help agencies manage and simply data centers and move off legacy hardware, according to GSA. Agencies can pilot systems and expand. Prices, GSA said, are 10 percent to 50 percent lower than previously published GSA rates.