Virginia signs Unisys for $242 million data center contract

Over the past few months, Deltek’s General Government Services research team has been following developments in Virginia as the Commonwealth transitions from its Northrup Grumman IT contract to a multi-vendor model. Virginia’s moving away from this contract represents a shift in state government purchasing, as it is the last of dying breed. Monolithic IT contracts have largely been replaced, as Texas, Georgia, Missouri, Utah, and Ohio have all negotiated various forms of a multi-sourcing model.

Earlier this month, Virginia took over its IT service contracts from Northrup Grumman and transitioned them to the new services integrator, SAIC. They will manage services until December when Virginia officially transitions to a multi-vendor model. Several new contracts have already been entered for service integration, mainframe, messaging and email, security, and service storage. A recent award was also made to Unisys to manage its server, storage, and data center services. The contract with Unisys is a 6-year deal worth $242.4 million.

According to state officials, the Commonwealth is ready to embrace this change and is looking forward to the greater flexibility and quality in the services it provides. According to a press release, Virginia CIO Nelson Moe sees this as “a new era in technology for the Commonwealth,” which will allow VITA’s services to be more agile, provided at market rates, and offer the opportunity for enhancements.

Source: StateScoop