DISA Suspends $1.6B VMWare RFP Deadline Amid Protests

The Defense Information Systems Agency February 19 suspended indefinitely the deadline for proposals for a company under common license giant VMWare virtualization servers, which would be worth $ 1.6 billion.The request for proposals, grant of maintenance of software and licenses, issued February 9, with applications due by February 17th and final proposals due February 23. But on February 19 DISA released an update for the PP to note that the term would be suspended "until further notice sufficient to allow the government to respond to questions received time.

The extension of the term is after more protests offer a heated response in the acquisition community.The defense contractor brand aims to consolidate in a single agreement for support to departments of Defense for more than two million licensed VMWare and reduce the administration of more than 9,270 contract VMWare separate operations that have occurred in the last five years, according to documents justifying the sole source DISA agreement.

Software VMWare is fully implemented and integrated into the Department of Defense and has been for over 11 years. VMWare has become the standard architecture, state documents, obscuring the percentage of virtualized environments DoD involved. Support brand continues software is required in order to maintain uniformity, resolution of common problems and service techniques. Due to the proprietary nature of the software code would not be possible that another brand of software to provide software support for the current inventory VMWare license.

But the agreement goes beyond server virtualization business dominates.It VMWare VMWare also includes desktop software-as-a-service, desktop virtualization, virtual storage, and more, and has sparked controversy in the contracting community according to the Washington Report on Technology says that the four companies submitted prior to the award protest with the Government Accountability Office. Protests by Amazon Web Services, Citrix Systems, Minburn Technology Group and Nutanix say the proposed contract unduly restrict competition.

Sources say that the agreement limits competition and VMWare give an unfair advantage, and that the close relationship between liberation and proposed term discouraged parts vendors.Large questions rationale document request were heavily edited by DISA, including market research, determining fair and reasonable price, list of sources involved, and the actions the Agency may request to remove or overcome obstacles took exception to full and open competition.Increasingly DISA is looking to license agreements or joint Jelas company as a way to improve efficiency and savings.

The operational component is the acquisition of a part and the acquisition looking TCO and perspective for life and simplicity. This is critical for the trip as a department, "Alfred Rivera, director of business center and development of DISA, said in October." How to make acquisitions that will not only benefit one community, but a whole [number of] the community? A decision by the GAO protest is due June 1st.