US Navy Awards $3.5B IT Services Contract to HP

The United States Department of the Navy has awarded HP’s Enterprise Service unit a $3.45 billion contract to provide a range of IT services and support the Navy’s communications network of approximately eight billion users. 

Under the terms of the five-year contract – which is an extension of a contract initiated 13 years ago – HP will get support from AT&T (News - Alert), IBM Corp., Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman Corp.

In a bid to provide secure network communications, the U.S. Navy formed the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, an IT outsourcing service program, in 2000.  HP has been one of the prime vendors for the Navy’s networking services, according to Meg Whitman, president and CEO of HP.

“With the award of the Next Generation Enterprise Network contract, HP is continuing its partnership with the U.S. Navy,” Whiteman said in a statement. “HP and its team of world-class partners recognize the importance of keeping the Navy’s backbone IT network secure, operational and moving forward for Sailors and Marines to support their operations.”

In order to bring in more government control over data-centric network operations and ensure consistency and security of the information services, the U.S. Navy is planning to transform the NMCI platform to the NGEN platform.

According to the Navy, the initial $321,689,010 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ), firm-fixed award fee contract for NGEN will continue through June 2018 if all options are exercised.

With the award of the NGEN contract, the Navy and the HP-led team will transition to a government-owned, contractor-operated environment while ensuring uninterrupted delivery of IT services to the many Sailors, Marines and civilians who use the network, HP officials said.

In the company’s bid to win the deal, HP defeated other bidders including Computer Sciences (News - Alert) Corp. and Harris Corp.??

Northrop Grumman received a $28 million contract from the U.S. Navy for engineering and production planning services for surface warfare and mine countermeasures mission module components that will deploy from, and integrate with, the littoral combat ship.