Air Force makes NetCents 2 awards, now what?
By
Nick Wakeman
The Air Force has made awards for its $6.9 billion NetCents 2 Products contract, a year rescinding awards to nine companies. Some of those companies won again, but five lost. And most of the protesting companies lost again as well. That begs the question: Are more protests imminent?
The Air Force moved ahead late Friday afternoon and has made its second attempt to award the $6.9 billion NetCents 2 Products contract, naming eight prime contractors late Friday afternoon.
The multiple-award task order contract was originally awarded last year to nine companies but after 11 other companies filed protests of the award, the Air Force quickly backed off and rescinded the awards.
The contract is designed to be the Air Force’s mandatory IT products contract to provide commercial off-the-shelf products in areas such as networking equipment, servers/storage, peripherals, multimedia, software (not included on other enterprise licenses), and identity management/biometric hardware and associated software. The contract has a three-year base period and three more option years.
The winners of round two are:
- Ace Technology Partners LLC., Arlington Heights, Ill.
- CDW Government LLC., Vernon Hills Ill.
- CounterTrade Products Inc., Arvada Colo.
- FedStore Corp., Rockville Md.
- General Dynamics IT, Needham Mass.
- Intelligent Decisions Inc., Ashburn Va.
- Iron Bow Technologies LLC., Chantilly Va.
- World Wide Technology Inc., Maryland Heights Mo.,
After the debacle of last year’s awards, protests and withdrawal, you would hope the Air Force has made a pretty bullet proof decision this time around. But one executive from a losing team predicted more protests will be filed, even though he said it was too soon for his company to decide.
Undoubtedly there are some very unhappy companies out there. Consider that of the original nine winners, only four won in the second round: Ace, Fedstore, GDIT, and Iron Bow. Losing out this time around are Blue Tech Inc., Global Technology Resources Inc., GTSI, M2 Technology and Red River Computer Co.
Of the 11 protestors from last year, only World Wide Technology and CounterTrade Products were successful this time around.
Some of the other companies that protested may have withdrawn from the competition over the course of the last year or were deemed outside of the competitive range, but it is worth reminding everyone who the other protesters were:
- Integration Technologies Group Inc.
- MicroTechnologies LLC
- Dell Federal Systems
- Sterling Computers Corp.
- Harris IT Services Corp.
- immixTechnology Inc.
- Insight Public Sector
- FCN Inc.
- Presidio Networked Solutions
Some pretty marquee names have been left on the sidelines. As my source said, “I guarantee you someone will [protest.]
So I stand by my comments in the blog I wrote Friday as I awaited word of the awards: Is the NetCents 2 merry-go-round about to start again?
Hang on. We are about to find out.