Contracts totaling $700M will ensure DISA is on demand

Five contracts potentially worth $700 million and awarded earlier this month under the Defense Information Systems Agency Server Processor Environment (SPE) program will bring scalable, on-demand processing capabilities to DISA's 17 computing service data centers and future locations approved by the agency ? ensuring that it pays only for what employees use and not a cent more.

ViON Corp. of Washington, D.C., Apptis Inc. and Sun Microsystems Federal Inc. were each awarded a single contract to run for five base years with three, one-year option periods. Hewlett-Packard Company was awarded two contracts under SPE.

During DISA Industry Day yesterday at the MILCOM 2006 conference, Alfred Rivera, DISA director of computing services, said the contracts will operate similarly to a utility service and would bring more flexibility and reduced costs to the agency.

"This month, we delivered the first capacity on-demand contract for server processing," Rivera said. "Capacity on demand means to have shared risks and rewards to put capacity on the floor as I need it. It allows us to be agile for our customers."

The scope of the contracts includes the hardware, operating system software and technical services for processing capacity for Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Sun Solaris and IBM AIX computing environments, according to a statement of objectives.

In November, DISA will be issuing contracts for storage capacity on demand, Rivera added.

Dawn S. Onley is a staff writer for Washington Technology's sister publication, Government Computer News.