A good proportion of recent publicity about the Federal market has centred on Desktop III, the contract contract won by Unisys – whose $700m bid was variously described as $100m or $200m less than the nearest competitor – for maybe 70,000 (and conceivably up to 250,000) 80386 systems. Each is capable of running MS-DOS or an operating system sporting a Posix-compliant interface, in this case Unix from the Santa Cruz Operation. The immediate primary requirement is for high-powered MS-DOS personal computers at a low price – according to Government Computer News’ estimates as little as $668 for a basic 80386 system, or $1,400 for a configured 20MHz 80386 system with cache, 42Mb disk and VGA colour – but Unix is already being used on some government personal computers and is likely to be installed on many more in the future.
Jeux Sans Frontieres
Observers also suggest that there’s no reason why the hardware might not end up as the core of very low cost Unix multi-user systems. And Unix – or rather Unix applications – appears to be a central feature of hold-ups in the functional testing following award of the contract; Air Force and Unisys officials said that a number of problems had cropped up including the ability to run the Enable office software under the Santa Cruz operating system, and a Unisys spokeswoman said the performance of Enable was the only serious question outstanding. Both Unisys and the Air Force have now clammed up about the subject, while Enable in the US did not respond by our deadline. For Unisys, Desktop III is turning into an obstacle course worthy of Jeux Sans Frontieres, with the latest potential problem being a congressional request for information understood to have been prompted by unspecified allegations of irregularities in the procurement procedure; Air Force officials said they were in the process of supplying required information. Although many of the large Unix contracts are for specific applications for specific agencies, others are much more like Desktop III – framework procurements that are initiated by a specific agency but in practice can be exploited as a source of cheap systems by numerous military and civil users. AFCAC 251 was one of the first of these – the FHA’s Cooper noted that his organisation had acquired over 100 systems under the contract – and is one reason the AFCAC expertise is being used to specify and manage more contracts in the same vein. Desktop III is one example: another is the AFCAC 300 Superminis project, initiated by the US Navy, which will make large systems available to users in the Navy, Army, Coastguard, Defense Logistics Agency and others including, probably, the Air Force. The draft Request For Procurement, due out this month with a full Request around August, is expected to specify 1,200 to 1,500 systems capable of supporting from 72 to 256 users apiece, according to an Air Force spokesman, and some estimates put the total value of the contract at $500m or more.
By Mike Faden
AFCAC 251 specified 16- to 64-user systems; the Superminis contract could therefore conceivably be used by the same agencies to provide larger office automation systems. Of the other large contracts that are approaching fruition, the Army supermicros contract, one of the biggest, is expected to be awarded in the first half of this year; current estimates suggest a value to the winning supplier of as much as $1,200m, although others put it closer to a mere $750m. Meanwhile the Treasury’s long-gestating DMAC (desktop) and TMAC (minis) procurements, valued at $800m and $400m – although as much as $1,800m has been allocated from Government funds – are due this year. If patience is a virtue, then anyone that succeeds in tracking the Department of Defense-Army Reserve Component Automation System is a saint, or will be by the time it is complete; for the contract is said to have taken 13 years and at least two incarnations to come to Request For Procurement stage and covers procurement of systems over a 12-year period after its award. For those that stick with it and win, it may stil
l be worth it, because the value of the contract is put as high as $1,000m. For the numerous agencies outside the military that are now putting together their own procurements, the task often involves automation of near-ancient manual tasks and records using Unix. Among them, the Department of the Interior’s ALMRS (Automated Land and Minerals System) has Presidential priority and about $250m approved for the task of computerising vast amounts of information now on paper; not surprisingly it combines office automation functions with a considerable imaging requirement. –
Examples of large forthcoming contracts; estimates of value of contracts vary very widely.
Agency and Estimated Timescale contract size
Army $750m to First half Supermicros $1,200m 1990
Treasury $1,200m 1990 TMAC
Navy, Army $500m Full Request AFCAC 300 August 1990
Army Reserves $1,000m At Request RCAS stage
Dept Interior $247m 1991 ALMRS
Gnl Services $250 At Request GSAS stage
The Forestry Service Geographic Information System with some similar requirements, is estimated to have a similar value, and is expected to reach Request For Procurement stage in the next few months. Other large procurements pending include NOVA, from the huge Veteran’s Administration organisation, while the General Services Administration itself is planning to switch from an existing proprietary office automation system to a Unix one. For the future, the consensus is that for Unix software suppliers, the acceptance and revenues generated by the booming market had better be channelled into further development to fend off the growing range of competitors, in particular those coming up from the MS-DOS world. As Boyd from Uniplex put it, Unix vendors must expect to be measured against a full range of products – not just against other traditional Unix vendors as in the past. For hardware suppliers, Unix may occupy the high ground but Desktop III is seen by some as the forerunner of future contracts that will specify systems capable of running OS/2, Unix or MS-DOS. Part one appeared in CI No 1,402
