SAP gets slice of Army logmod deal

SAP Public Sector and Education Inc. has been selected as the e-business software provider for the Army's Wholesale Logistics Modernization Program, the company announced Thursday.

The $680 million WLMP, which is managed by the Army's Communications-Electronics Command (Cecom), was awarded to Computer Sciences Corp. in December 1999.

CSC, with final approval from the Army, selected SAP as the software provider, said Tom Shirk, president of SAP Public Sector and Education.

The CSC/Army product team conducted a three-month, competitive procurement evaluation process. SAP Public Sector and Education's enterprise portal, mySAP Workplace, best met the group's four criteria: total cost of ownership, functional capabilities, technical strength and partnership.

MySAP Workplace brings together tools for financial management, logistics, human resources, customer relationship management, advanced planning and data warehouses, along with non-SAP components.

"[WLMP] is a modernization enabler for the Army, and CSC is the first [application service provider] we're using in the federal space," Shirk said Thursday at SAP's e-government symposium in Washington, D.C. He said the company's mySAP solutions will enable military leaders to make decisions "online and in real time."

Jeff Plotnick, CSC vice president in charge of the WLMP contract, said SAP's commitment to the project, as well as the strength of its software solutions "convinced us that they were in it for the long haul and were the best choice."

The Army deal is not SAP's first foray into the defense arena. The company also is working on five projects with the Navy and is also involved in projects at the Defense Logistics Agency, Shirk said.