65 win spots on $20B NIH IT contract

NIH has named 65 winners of its $20 billion CIO Commodities and Solutions contract, the follow-on to its Electronic Commodities Store III contract.

The new contract will be used to buy commodity IT products and solutions and is open to all government agencies. The major change includes an ability to provide IT capabilities via managed services models such as cloud computing as well as traditional transactions.

The winners of the contract are divided into two broad categories. Seven companies are identified as original equipment manufacturers, while the rest are described as value-added resellers.

The OEMs are: AT&T, Computer Sciences Corp., Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, IMS Government Solutions and ViON Corp.

The VARS include many familiar names including CDW Government, DLT Solutions, Force 3 Inc., MicroTech and World Wide Technology.

Government Acquisitions, which according to Deltek had the largest number of task orders under ECS III, also secured a spot on the new contract.

NIH is taking steps wrap up ECS III by setting a May 9 deadline for orders. But orders placed by that date can still continue for a five-year performance period. By that point, CIO-CS will be ready for business.

Unless, of course, there are protests.

There are several companies, including Lockheed Martin, Harris and AECOM, who held positions on ECS III that are not on the list of winners. But it is unclear whether they pursued the new CIO-CS contract. None of the companies did significant business under ESC III, according to market research on the Deltek website.

But if protests are filed with the Government Accountability Office, the contract would be put on hold until they are resolved.

The contract was delayed earlier this year when several companies protested for being eliminated from the competitive range of the contract.

Losing bidders are just now getting their debriefs on why they didn’t make the cut. After that, they have 10 days to decide whether to protest.