VA awards data center deals

The Department of Veterans Affairs last week awarded more than $680 million in contracts for products and services for its Austin Automation Center in Texas.

The AAC Enterprise System (AACES) contracts run for 10 years and provide hardware, software, and technical and professional services supporting the Austin data center. Logicon Inc. was awarded the lion's share with a $650 million deal, and Research Dynamics Inc. captured a small business set-aside worth more than $34 million, said Kraig Ruckel, chief of the technical infrastructure division at the AAC.

Both contracts are for one base year and include nine one-year options, Ruckel said.

Logicon had been on the original contract awarded in November 1991 through its parent company, Northrop Grumman Corp., but that deal ends in September and the VA wanted to make the current award in August with a start date of Oct. 1, Ruckel said.

The AACES contract covers products and services that include providing equipment and software and supporting the AAC's desktop services, data entry, distribution and on-site peripheral equipment.

Project management, software development, system integration and security engineering are among the IT services included in the contract, according to a Logicon spokesman.

The new contract also has a stronger focus on products and technology refreshes than its predecessor. Items ranging from mainframes to PC servers, tape silo subsystems, direct access storage devices and Unix servers are covered by technology refreshes, the spokesman said.

The AAC provides data center services for the VA as well as agencies including NASA, the Transportation Department's Federal Highway Administration, the National Archives and Records Administration and the General Accounting Office.