(May 28): A unit of Dell Technologies Inc won a US$9.7 billion contract to help the US military handle its licences for Microsoft Corp software related to email, spreadsheets and other needs across classified and unclassified systems, the Pentagon said.
Dell Federal Systems beat several competitors for the five-year contract, Pentagon chief information officer Kirsten Davies told reporters. She said it would save the department US$422 million every year.
The Pentagon is one of the world’s largest employers, with more than 2.1 million service members and 811,000 civilian employees.
The contract “will streamline and consolidate critical Microsoft software and services across the Department of War, the intelligence community, and the US Coast Guard,” she said.
The contract doesn’t involve newly appropriated dollars but instead represents the consolidated funding from hundreds of offices that previously sought annual software licence agreements on their own, Davies added.
The Dell contract “provides a singular place to provide the licences we need to run our Microsoft systems and eliminates a lot of redundancy,” said acting Navy chief information officer Barry Tanner.
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“The point of this agreement was to consolidate and gain the efficiencies on what we are already purchasing,” he said.
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