Traditional government suppliers Zenith Data Systems, Electronic Data Systems and Sysorex Information Systems have each submitted bids for the US Air Force Desktop IV contract, thought to be one of the largest single procurements of small computers ever at around some 300,000 units. Bull SA’s Zenith claims the largest installed base of computers in government, while Electronic Data supplies personal computers to the US Army under the Standard Multi-user Computer contract, and Sysorex recently won the much-protested DMAC II microcomputer contract with the Treasury Department. Electronic News adds that Government Technology Services Inc – winner of the potential $500m Navy desktop contract – IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Wang Laboratories Inc, Apple Federal Systems, Ogden ERC and CompuAdd Corp have also submitted bids. Given the record number of bids, the paper says the Air Force will probably split the bid between two vendors – also it will be hoping to avoid the problems it ran in to when it appointed Unisys Corp as the the sole supplier on the Desktop III bid, which was awarded a couple of years ago and is still experiencing delays. Unisys is not expected to bid on Desktop IV, nor is AT&T Co, which says that its strengths lie in systems integration rather than pure commodity deals. Desktop IV calls for personal computers with 20Mb and 40Mb disk – 200Mb systems must run Posix-compliant Unix, Ada, SQL relational databases, X Window, GKS and CGM. They must all be able to connect to the government’s existing Zenith, Unisys and AT&T installed base. The US Air Force contract is expected to be awarded before the end of the year.
