Dell gets second chance at ITES-3H

Dell Federal Systems, which is a long-time incumbent on the Army’s ITES procurement vehicles, has convinced the service to take a second look at its bid for the third iteration of the $5 billion contract.

The Army is running a two-step process to make awards for ITES-3H, and Dell and nearly 20 other companies were eliminated from phase one and were told they wouldn’t be considered for a final award.

The rejection led Dell and many of the others to file protests in August with the Government Accountability Office.

GAO has denied the bid protests of 13 companies, but protests by Dell, Telos, Hewlett-Packard and Dynamics Systems raised different issues and weren’t lumped into the GAO decision that covered the others.

For Dell, the Army has decided to take a corrective action and take a second look at its proposal.

My understanding is that the same thing will happen with Telos, HP and Dynamics Systems.

So, those four will be back in the hunt for an ITES-3H contract.

This is a boost for Dell because they are an incumbent on ITES-2H and have pulled in nearly $700 million in task orders since 2007, according to Deltek.

But being back in the hunt isn’t a guarantee of victory.

Dell was guarded in their reaction. They aren’t doing a victory dance, which isn’t surprising given that they are back in an active competition and haven’t won anything yet.

“Dell’s goal is, and has been, to provide our nation’s soldiers with effective and efficient IT solutions that will help them to better accomplish their very important mission and we’re very pleased to have an opportunity to continue doing so on a broad scale,” a spokesman said.

The Army expects to make four large business and four small business awards in spring of 2015.

Besides Dell, the other incumbents are IBM, Iron Bow, CDW-G, Unicom Systems and World Wide Technology.