Four teams battle for San Diego County project

Four integration powerhouses will compete for San Diego County's lucrative IT and telecommunications outsourcing opportunity recompete, scheduled for award in December.Computer Sciences Corp., IBM Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Unisys Corp. are leading teams in pursuit of the contract, industry sources said. CSC is the incumbent contractor on the deal.The four systems integrators were among eight companies prequalified to compete as primes earlier this year. The seven-year deal is valued at about $875 million.IBM was the only company to announce publicly its team before bidding. Big Blue said in July that it is pursuing the opportunity with key subcontractors Accenture Ltd. and Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego.San Diego County Chief Information Officer Michael Moore confirmed this month that four teams had bid on the project, but declined to name the firms.Both Northrop Grumman IT of McLean, Va., and Unisys told Washington Technology that they had bid on the project as primes. CSC did not respond to inquiries, but CGI-AMS of Fairfax, Va., confirmed that it was a subcontractor on CSC's team.Northrop Grumman's team includes EDS Corp., and BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Va., said Juli Ballesteros, a Northrop Grumman IT spokeswoman.San Diego County hopes to evaluate the bids by Oct. 3, Moore said.The county will notify bidders whether they made the competitive range. If so, they will be allowed to make oral presentations from Oct. 10 to Oct. 14. The award is scheduled for Dec. 15.The scope of work for the county's new outsourcing contract is essentially the same as the last one, including areas such as networks, applications, desktops, help desk and data center support services.However, the new contract has shifted focus from infrastructure consolidation to business process transformation, Moore said previously.San Diego County plans to evaluate the teams not only on how well they can manage the county's portfolio of more than 600 applications, but also on how they plan to transform business processes associated with mobile computing, enterprise applications and back office functions.Staff Writer Ethan Butterfield contributed to this story. Deputy Editor William Welsh can be reached at wwelsh@postnewsweektech.com.