The Navy will break up future contractor support for its terrestrial network into five procurements rather than continue outsourcing to a single contractor, as it currently does with its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet contract.

As the Navy winds up NMCI in favor of what's been dubbed the Next Generation Enterprise Network, it plans on making five procurements, each to support a segment of NGEN, a Navy official told FierceGovernmentIT.

The five segments are:

Independent Security Operations Oversight and Assessment

• RFP in fiscal 2011 / Q1
• Award fiscal 2011 / Q3

Transportation

• RFP in fiscal 2011 / Q2
• Award fiscal 2012 / Q2

End User Hardware

• As appropriate

Enterprise Software Licensing

• Procurement to be made via DoD Enterprise Software Initiative
• Award fiscal 2012 / Q4

Enterprise Services

• RFP in Fiscal 2011 / Q4
• Award fiscal 2012 / Q4

The Navy's current plan is to complete its transition into NGEN by about 2014. Navy personnel dissatisfaction with NMCI is legendary in its acerbity, with exchanges on discussion boards suggesting that NMCI is a secret al Qaeda plot, though such complaints seem to have lessened somewhat in recent years.  

The Navy awarded EDS--now Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)--a single $10 billion contract to manage Navy terrestrial networks in 2000. Unlike with NMCI, the Navy plans to retain more command and control over its network with NGEN and has already started to claim back such functions under the $3.4 billion Continuity Of Service Contract the Navy signed with HP earlier this year to ensure its network continues running after the original NMCI contract expired on Sept. 30.  

For more:
- download a Navy NMCI/NGEN transition press kit (.pdf)
- go to the NGEN online reference library

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