HP comes up ACES with $2.5B NASA win

HP Enterprise Services won a $2.5 billion NASA contract to manage, secure and maintain its IT infrastructure across all of the agency’s research and flight centers. The program is called Agency Consolidated End-User Services, or ACES, and stretches out over 10 years.

The contract is a firm-fixed-price, task order contract with a four-year base period with two three-year option periods. The contract will be managed at the NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) in Mississippi.

“The NASA contract is very important for HP and we are honored to have been selected," said Dennis Stolkey, senior vice president, HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector.

According to a source at NASA, only HP Enterprise Services and Lockheed Martin were in the final stages of the bidding. Lockheed Martin confirmed this to Washington Technology and offered a statement on the bidding.

“Our team is disappointed that NASA selected another solution to perform its consolidated end-user services," a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin said. "We submitted a ‘best-value’ solution based on our knowledge of the program and our understanding of NASA’s mission. We continue to serve NASA on other contracts. "

The ACES contract is NASA’s solution to develop a long-term outsourcing arrangement with the commercial sector to provide and manage most of NASA's personal computing hardware, agency-standard software, mobile IT services, peripherals and accessories, associated end-user services, and supporting infrastructure.

The contract award is part of the final stages of the restructuring of NASA's departmentwide IT infrastructure. ACES is one of five "towers"of the agency's IP3 IT overhaul (the desktop/end user component). With the $2.5 billion award, the project has passed the halfway mark for the reported $4.3 billion dollar project.

Previously, a lot of NASA's managed services had been provided through the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA (ODIN) contract that was awarded to Lockheed Martin and had been in place for the last 10 years. Most of what was managed through ODIN will now be moved to the ACES project.

"The majority of ODIN will transfer to the ACES project," said Mike Sweigart, director of procurement at NASA's Shared Services Center. "Anything that plugs into a wall, multifunctional devices, mobile, smart phones, virtual seats ... ."

The center opened in 2006 on the grounds of NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Kiln, Miss. It is a public/private initiative between NASA and Computer Sciences Corp. Its purpose is to consolidate NASA activities from all NASA centers in the areas of financial management, human resources, IT and procurement.

Hewlett Packard of Palo Alto, Ca., ranks No. 12 on Washington Technology’s 2010 Top 100 list of the largest federal government contractors.