The AF uses license to buy 65,000 copies of Oracle
Connecting state and local government leaders
When the Air Force signed a three-year, $52 million site license for Oracle Corp. database software and development tools last month, it marked a new lease on life for the Defense Department's Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering contract. The Air Force also took the lead as DOD's top site licenser. Air Force logistics users, who work in more than 20 programs, will get 65,000 concurrent Oracle licenses at a 74 percent discount from the General Services Administration Information
When the Air Force signed a three-year, $52 million site license for Oracle Corp.
database software and development tools last month, it marked a new lease on life for the
Defense Departments Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering contract.
The Air Force also took the lead as DODs top site licenser.
Air Force logistics users, who work in more than 20 programs, will get 65,000
concurrent Oracle licenses at a 74 percent discount from the General Services
Administration Information Technology Schedule price, said Lt. Col. Glenn Taylor. He is
director of commercial IT products for the Standard Systems Group at Maxwell Air Force
Bases Gunter Annex, Ala.
Two Oracle technicians will work on site at Gunter Annex at no extra charge, SSG
contracting officer Phyllis Akers said. As with other government software leasing
agreements, the Air Force can choose to cancel the deal after the first year, she said.
The license follows three other large Oracle site licenses arranged through I-CASE by
the Air Mobility Command, Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Personnel Command, said
Vincent Steckler, vice president of applications solutions for I-CASE contractor Logicon
Inc. of Torrance, Calif.
Weve worked out funding arrangements for leasing, maintenance and yearly
options to match what different organizations need, Taylor said. Some organizations
have deferred most of the payments until the second and third years, he said.
Taylor said the top 15 I-CASE site licenses for which SSG acted as contracting agent
have cost a total of $200 million, which he said represents a 79 percent discount from IT
Schedule pricing.
DOD agencies are already looking to us for lessons learned in site
licensing, Taylor said. The Army Communications-Electronics Command is leasing Sybase Inc.
relational database management software for $3.7 million through Logicon and SSG, and the
National Imagery and Mapping Agency is leasing Sybase software for $11.2 million in the
same way, he said.
The Navy, which has taken the lead for a proposed DOD office automation site license,
sought Air Force counsel in negotiating a volume purchasing agreement for Microsoft Corp.
software through Lockheed Martin Corp.s Air Force Global Combat Support System
contract. Under the GCSS terms, a DOD user pays $405 over three years for Microsoft
Office, Windows NT Workstation and Exchange, or an extra $189 over three years to receive
operating system upgrades and Microsoft Systems Management Server. For $632 over three
years, a user gets all that and Microsoft BackOffice.
The Air Force will save $245 million if it buys 300,000 licenses through the Lockheed
agreement, Taylor said.
No other DOD agency is working as fast as the Air Force in making large-scale software
licensing deals.
Last fall, Marvin Langston, deputy chief information officer and deputy assistant
secretary of Defense for CIO policy and implementation, predicted that departmentwide
software licenses and blanket purchasing agreements through the Enterprise Software
Initiative could be in place as early as this month. The prediction has not come to pass.
Were still going back and forth with Oracle about a servicewide
Oracle site license, Taylor said. We dont want to overbuy, and they dont
want us to underbuy.
In a second wave of year 2000 software acquisition, SSG last month also signed a
$198,000 site license for remediation tools from Century Services Inc. of Germantown, Md.
The company gave SSG an 86 percent discount, Taylor said.
Kenneth Heitkamp, SSGs software factory director, said the Cobol tools are under
consideration for validation of completed fixes. He said the 20 million lines of code in
base-level standard information systems have already been remediated, independently
tested and put back into operation at 180 locations worldwide.
Heitkamp said SSG now wants to extend its testing to its communications infrastructure
and to set up a Y2K Fusion Center that will be open 24 hours a day to specifically
address Y2K problems from around the Air Force.