NASA launches workstation bonanza
NASA has selected eight companies for its $4 billion SEWP III
NASA has selected eight companies for its $4 billion follow-on Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement contract.
Like its predecessors, SEWP III is a fixed price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity purchasing vehicle for high-end workstations and peripherals. The SEWP contracts have been some of the most successful governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) vehicles.
The contracts were popular among federal users of high-end Unix- and Microsoft Corp. Windows NT-based workstations. SEWP II, which expired July 15, collected about 1,000 task orders each month, adding up to about $1.5 billion in sales over four years, NASA officials said.
The SEWP contract seeks to provide state-of-the-art commercial hardware and software.
The original SEWP contract helped establish Unix for NASA's scientific and engineering workstations. The contract has increasingly included other operating systems such as Windows NT and Linux. The SEWP III contract also includes provisions for networking and security. This year, SEWP III officials required all workstations to support accessibility features as mandated by Section 508, the law that requires federal agencies to buy technology that is accessible to people with disabilities.
The eight SEWP III vendors are: Hewlett-Packard Co.; GTSI Corp.; IBM Global Services Inc.; Silicon Graphics Inc.; Government Micro Resources Inc.; Compaq Computer Corp.; Unisys Corp.; and Logicon FDC.
The categories for SEWP III include electrical computer-aided design, mechanical CAD, database servers, visualization, high-performance computer servers, earth science computers, networking devices and mass storage devices.
Joel Lipkin, senior vice president of the customer division at GTSI, said SEWP has been a key contract within government. "We have multiple GWACs and each of them works in different ways," he said. SEWP, however, has been integrated into the purchasing side of a number of government agencies beyond NASA, he said. "It's a favored contract for many agencies."
It was one of the first to focus on electronic procurement, he said.
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