NASA Awards HP with $2.5B Contract

NASA has awarded HP a $2.5 billion contract over four years for desktop services and devices, HP said Thursday.

The contract, awarded to HP's Enterprise Services Division, will cover the four-year base period with an additional two three-year option periods, stretching across all NASA facilities in the United States.

The program will be part of the NASA Agency Consolidated End-User Service or ACES program, NASA said, covering 60,000 users. HP said it will "modernize NASA's entire end-user infrastructure". The contract will cover a variety of Computing Seat, Tier 2/3 Service Desk Support and Collaboration Services. The Computing Seat services share the resources of a single HP desktop with as many as ten other users, via the Microsoft Windows Multipoint OS. Those services, plus a related cellular services package, will be designed with security and collaboration services in mind.

NASA personnel use IT to support NASA's core business, scientific, research and computational activities," said Michael Sweigart, procurement officer of the Shared Services Center at NASA. "HP will provide, manage, secure and maintain these essential IT services for the agency."

HP will team with numerous small businesses to meet NASA's small business participation guidelines and diverse mission needs, HP said.

"The ACES contract will help evolve NASA's IT environment to a centralized, adaptable IT infrastructure to enable economies of scale, agency-wide visibility and improved management and security," Dennis Stolkey, senior vice president and general manager, U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services, said in a statement.

NASA, meanwhile, is prepping for the Friday launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, expected to be attended by President Obama and Rep. Gabrelle Giffords, the wife of shuttle commander Mark Kelly. Giffords was shot in an Arizona shopping center in January. She has been recuperating at a Houston rehab center.