NMCI gained new life July 8 when the Navy awarded a $3.4 billion, five-year contract to HP Enterprise Services to continue as the Department of the Navy's information technology provider.    

NMCI theoretically does come to an end Sept. 30; the contract awarded July 8 is different procurement known as the Continuity-Of-Service-Contract, but Navy and Marine Corps servicemen will see little difference come Oct. 1.

The Navy had originally planned to move directly from NMCI to a new network management construct known as NGEN, but the Navy "ran into some challenges in understanding how to move the big beast called NMCI into the future," Navy Chief Information Officer Rob Carey told FierceGovernmentIT in a June 30 interview.

The COSC will give the Navy more direct control over its networks than NMCI allowed, Carey said, but there will be little material difference between what HP provides under NMCI compared to what it will provide under the COSC, he added.

The Navy's goal is to eventually segue into a more ambitious construct known as the Naval Networking Environment 2016, which envisions a much more rationalized set of Navy networks that also provides services through the network itself.

The Navy awarded the $10 billion NMCI contract to EDS in 2000; HP bought EDS in 2008 for $13.9 billion.  

Coincidentally, the Navy also held an industry day July 8 for NGEN but did not make any announcement about when a request for proposals might be released.

For more:
- read Rob Carey's exit interview with FierceGovernmentIT
- see the COSC contract announcement
- go to the NGEN industry reference library, updated with presentations form the July 8 industry day
- read a CHIPS article on getting from NMCI to NGEN (.pdf)
- learn more about NNE 2016

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