Page 9 - FCW, September 15, 2017
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Guard and Credential Guard on Windows 10, such as the use of Trusted Platform Module 2.0,” says Haskins. “So we make sure items being sold through the CBs meet those minimum Army specs.”
From a vendor viewpoint, this puts fairly tight constraints on what they can offer. Vendors are required to strictly qualify each product per Army requirements and specifications on ADMC-2 and for CB offerings. Vendors must also forecast to ensure volume product availability during the CB buying periods as replacements are not permitted.
The Army ensures that buyers have a variety of options to customize their requirements— such as changing 8 GB of RAM to 16 GB or adding and substituting types of drives—but these also are pre-negotiated and can’t change during the CB period.
“The Army Consolidated Buy has been a successful program for Army customers, CHESS, and ADMC-2 contract holders. The program encompasses standards, required regulations, competition, and great value to the Government,” says Kathy Gaston, ADMC -2 Program Manager for CDW Government (CDW-G).
The basic original offering of laptops, notebooks and monitors hasn’t changed much since the original CB-1 was created in 2005. The Army has continually reviewed customer requirements adding CB categories as necessary over the years, says Gaston, who has worked the
contract since the inception of ADMC-1 in 2001. Other items, such as teleconferencing equipment, accessories, rugged devices, and so on, can be procured through ADMC-2, in conjunction with the CB.
The volume of equipment
sold through the contract has certainly changed, increasing steadily as various system categories are added. The most recent addition was system configurations offered through the contract as part of the government-wide strategic solutions (GSS) initiative. “We do an average of approximately $4 million worth of business annually through the CB,” says Gaston.
The 10-year ADMC-2 has a ceiling total of $5.5 billion for all of the participating Army, DoD, and federal agencies. There
is no fee charged for placing orders against the CB contracts. Going forward, there are no major changes expected to the structure of the CBs, although some aspects of how the ADMC contract might be implemented could change.
The CHESS program itself, says Haskins, is looking at ways to aggregate orders into larger buys. This may happen at the command level instead of individual organizations. That might also mean changes to its contracts to make that aggregation easier to accomplish. It might look at how successfully the CBs have operated to inform how it might make any changes.“We’ve seen that prices on the CB turn out to be a kind of
ceiling price, and that vendors can often discount from that for a large bulk order,” he says. “I think that’s certainly something we’ll look into in the future.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT THESE RESOURCES: CDWG.COM/DELL CDWG.COM/SAMSUNG CDWG.COM/ADMC2
THE ELITE LEVEL OF CONTRACTS
With the designation as “Best-in-Class” by the OMB, ADMC-2 and eventually ADMC-3 joins the NIH’s CIO-CS, the GSA Schedule 70, and NASA’s SEWP in a select group of contracts now deemed the government’s preferred IT sources.
For the first time, the Army CHESS program this year participated in a government-wide GSS procurement through the ADMC-2, along with the other three BIC contracts. “We’ve had the (GSS) product categories on the Consolidated Buy for a year or so,
but this is the first buy we’ve gone through with the other BICs,” says Doug Haskins, CHESS product lead.
That should help get the word out to potential non-Army customers about ADMC-2 and the CB, he says. CHESS has been able to go and meet with federal agencies it’s never spoken to before.
“After the current CB closes in September (2017), we should have some interesting data on any increase in non-Army customers,” he says.















































































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