Air Force awards netcentric products contract Published April 26, 2013 By Courtesy of The Business and Enterprise Systems Directorate MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. - -- The Air Force announced the award of a set of contracts worth up to $6.9 billion that will make providing innovative information technology products and capabilities covering the full spectrum of operations and missions to its warfighters quicker and easier. The Air Force's Network Centric Solutions-2, or NETCENTS-2, team awarded its netcentric products contracts April 19, which have an aggregate ceiling of $6.9 billion with a three-year base ordering period and three 12-month options. The multiple award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts were awarded to eight businesses and are expected to be available for ordering this month. The netcentric products contract provides the Air Force with a full range of innovative, competitively-priced, world-class netcentric IT products to support the full spectrum of netcentric operations and missions. Commercially available off-the-shelf products offered on the netcentric products contract include: networking equipment, servers/storage peripherals, multimedia hardware, software, identity management/biometric hardware and associated software. The contracts will provide for delivery and warranty as well. "The netcentric products contracts are a mechanism to ensure more efficient, secure and compliant IT solutions by addressing such areas as gray market equipment, supply chain risk management, Energy Star and the use of [Department of Defense] and [Air Force] approved product lists," said Robert Carl Shofner, director of the Business and Enterprise Systems Directorate. "We also expect to achieve considerable cost savings by leveraging nearly a billion dollars of annual IT purchasing to resellers instead of integrators as we did with the original NETCENTS contracts." The netcentric products contract is mandatory for Air Force use. However, use of the contract may be available to DOD and other federal agencies when it is related to requirements for interoperability with Air Force capabilities, supports Air Force IT infrastructure, applications or operations, supports host-tenant arrangements involving Air Force units, or is in support of joint operations and solutions. Although the netcentric products contracts will be managed by the NETCENTS-2 team at Gunter, delivery orders against the contracts will be placed by contracting officers in the requiring agencies. Additional information on the use of the netcentric contracts will be distributed to Air Force contracting officers and through major command and reporting unit directors of communications and information as the contracts are made available for ordering. NETCENTS-2 is a set of five categories of contract capabilities spanning netcentric products, network operations and infrastructure solutions, applications services, enterprise integration and service management, and information technology professional services.