Major NETCENTS Win to Create DKO Web Portal
In February 2006, “Small Businesses Succeeding As USAF’s $9B NetCents Contract Receives Promo Push” shone a spotlight on the Network Centric Solutions (NETCENTS) program. Recently, a Northrop Grumman-led team received a large NETCENTS award – a maximum $267 million task order from the US Army to develop Defense Knowledge Online (DKO). The Army already has its own Army Knowledge Online (AKO) system; DKO is envisioned as the entry point for all U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and authorized users worldwide to access DoD and government intranets supporting operations, missions and critical support processes. DKO applications will all be provided through a secure, service-oriented framework, as opposed to the standard I.T. approach of stovepiped applications and non-prioritized bandwidth.
This is the largest portal task order ever awarded by the US federal government, and Northrop Grumman’s many teammates on the contract include:
- Appian in Vienna, VA
- AT&T in San Antonio, TX
- Cherry Road Technologies in Parsippany, NJ
- Cisco Systems, Inc. in San Jose, CA
- Dell in Round Rock, Texas
- EMC2 in Hopkinton, MA
- Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, CA
- CSC in El Segundo, CA
- SAIC in San Diego, CA
- EDS in Plano, TX
- ePlus, Inc. in Herndon, VA
- McDonald Bradley, Inc. in Herndon, VA
- SOLERS, Inc. in Arlington, VA
- Ennovex Solutions, Inc. in Chantilly, VA
- SRA International in Fairfax, Va.
Northrop Grumman’s key domain expertise involves their previous work on tactical warfighting portal applications. Under the terms of the task order, Northrop Grumman’s Information Technology (IT) sector will provide full systems integration, application development, and operations and maintenance and technology evolution, growing the DKO enterprise solution from 1.8 million users to possibly 8 million users or more, potentially across all federal government agencies.
The length of the DKO task order is 1 year with 4 six-month options. Initial work will be performed at Fort Belvoir, VA, an undisclosed site in Maryland, and in southwest Asia. Northrop Grumman release.
