NASA rethinks $1.5B enterprise data center contract
The space agency postpones its RFP to alter its acquisition strategy
NASA has announced it’s reworking its strategy for acquiring an enterprise data center, and has postponed the release of a final request for proposals for what could have been a $1.5 billion contract.
NASA said its plans for the NASA Enterprise Data Center (NEDC) program didn’t meet its enterprise needs. The agency said it made the decision after a reassessment in light of leadership changes and new requirements from the Office of Management and Budget regarding cloud computing, greening information technology, virtualization, and federal data center guidance.
The space agency posted a notice dated Feb. 26 announcing the decision on one of its Web sites and that note was reposted on March 5 on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.
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NASA’s NEDC program is the only one of five components in a planned IT consolidation that market research firms estimate to be worth more than $4 billion total for which the agency is yet to issue a final RFP. The NEDC contract would include requirements currently met under the Unified NASA Information Technology Services contract, such as data center operations, facility management, hosting services, and storage services, NASA has said.
The enterprise data center program had been estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion by market research firms based on an earlier draft RFP for the project.
However, NASA added in its recent notice that the “strategy and consolidation plan will significantly change.” The agency expects the new plan to be completed this fall.
NASA said it wants to create a data center consolidation plan to incorporate all data centers, systems, applications and that would include a data center architecture and full enterprise assessment. That approach would allow NASA to design an infrastructure strategy to deal with all its business requirements and take advantage of opportunities to reduce energy costs and make use of innovations like cloud computing.
About the Author
Ben Bain is a reporter for Federal Computer Week.