The US Air Force (USAF) has added eight new companies to its Network Centric Solutions-2 (NETCENTS-2) contract worth up to $6.9bn, instead of reopening the bidding process or changing the terms of the deal.
The eight new companies include M2 Technology, immix Technology, Blue Tech, Unicom Government, Global Technology Resources, Micro Tech, Red River Computer and Integration Technologies Group.
The decision to add suppliers was taken after re-evaluating technical proposals by the Government Accountability Office in May 2013, following a protest by some of the companies that missed the initial contract announcement in April 2013.
Through this six-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract, the USAF will procure networking equipment, servers/storage, peripherals, multimedia, software, identity management/biometric hardware and associated software to support the Internet Protocol Network.
On 19 April 2013, the US Air Force originally awarded eight ID/IQ contracts under NETCENTS-2 products to General Dynamics, Ace Technology Partners, CDW Government, CounterTrade Products, FedStore, Intelligent Decisions, Iron Bow Technologies and World Wide Technology.
Under the firm-fixed-price, multiple-award, contract, any of the companies can receive orders for the next six years.
NETCENTS-2 is a set of five categories of contract capabilities spanning netcentric products, network operations and infrastructure solutions, applications services, enterprise integration and service management and information technology professional services.
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/HICK, Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex is the contracting activity.
Dell Marketing and Round Rock have already been awarded a $24.9m ID/IQ contract for up to 100,000 Hypervisor software licenses including software maintenance for first-year.
