For Unix hardware and software suppliers, the huge contracts from the US government still represent some of the most glittering prizes. The 10 largest pending or recently awarded procurements based on Unix could together eventually be some $10,000m, approaching the size of the 1988 worldwide Unix systems market. Nobody, however, is suggesting that path to riches is always simple. First, there’s the gestation period of up to five or even ten years while a billion-dollar procurement slowly proceeds from conception to formal Request For Procurement and eventual award. There’s the multi-million dollar cost of preparing and bidding for these contracts. Then there is the margin-cutting competitive bidding for business from a government whose use of standards is driven by the need to cut costs – and which is still haunted by the publicity surrounding tales of $250 hammers slipped into contractors’ expenses.

Foul

And no sooner has the winning supplier reached the post than it is confronted with a new set of hurdles, often starting with another vendor crying foul and challenging the contract award. Take for instance Zenith’s dispute (since settled) of the award to Unisys of the current $700m Desktop III successor to the earlier Zenith-won Desktop II, or the Martin-Marietta protests over the Honeywell-Apple success in the $164m Air Force contract for some 10,000 A/UX Macs last August. Even if objections are quelled, functional tests passed (another Desktop III stumbling block) and first shipment dates agreed, there’s always the chance that the procurement may never result in anything like the huge sales volumes suggested in the procurement documents. Commented Lynn Boyd, vice-president of Federal operations at Uniplex, which has won or been involved in numerous government procurements, Many of the huge Federal programmes are structured as IDIQ – Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity which means that the Government may buy up to a certain number of systems but doesn’t guarantee any quantity. Vendors that believe in the strength of their products and actively help in the sales effort after the contract award can do well from these contracts, she claimed; on the other hand, to think that merely pitching a product that is below market strength will result in volume sales is very nave. Large procurements may now provide a framework for various agencies to buy systems, and to achieve maximum penetration suppliers may, it seems, have to put in as much sales effort after the contract award as before. Other observers selected the widely publicised example of AFCAC 251, the huge contract for small multi-user office systems originally estimated at $3,500m. Following award of the contract to AT&T with the Prelude software from Phase II Systems Inc, Cambridge, Massachusetts, the press was filled with suggestions that only a fraction of the planned volume of shipments was taking place, due in part to lack of sales effort.

By Mike Faden

Air Force officials now say that the contract is on schedule, but Phase II president Bill Spencer admitted a slow start and some disappointment, partly related to internal factors at AT&T but also involving a mismatch between the products supplied and the high expectations of some users apparently anticipating a high-powered equivalent of personal computer office applications, resulting in negative publicity on the government grapevine and subsequent lack of take-up of the products. Many of these large contracts continue to centre on providing office automation, and the increasing trust placed in Unix systems for the purpose is indicated both by the sheer volume of contracts and by the way that they are infiltrating not only military administrative functions but even specialised tactical and mission critical systems including the ACCS Army maneouvre control system, as well as rather less publicised applications for the spooks at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. However, the installed base of personal computers now plays an important part in determining procurement

specifications; contracts such as the Desktop series have filled military and other agencies with personal computers and this is reflected in the need for Unix systems to adapt to MS-DOS in various ways. Links to MS-DOS computers and applications are a clear example; others are the ability to run Unix, OS/2 or MS-DOS on the same system (Desktop III) or, according to Computer Reseller News, even using Unix to multi-task MS-DOS applications under VP/ix (the $850m Federal Aviation Administration’s OATS contract recently awarded to AT&T). Of course, we should not really be talking about Unix in connection with Government specifications at all, because the Federal Information Processing Standard 151 Posix interface, rushed out by the US government’s standards body NIST after the DEC/Wang objection to the use of the AT&T System V Interface Definition in the AFCAC 251 procurement, is used in most Unix-type procurements. Posix is currently viewed as not comprehensive enough to guarantee the compatibility and portability that the Government seeks, but the IEEE, NIST and procurement agencies are working on it; the Federal Information Processing Standard will be both enforced more firmly and broadened in scope. To date, the Posix Federal Standard has been based on a draft specification but a revised specification based on finalised IEEE specifications is imminent; according to NIST programme manager Shirley Radack, adherence to this will be mandatory, after a six month phase-in period. The catch? That this applies only where the procurement specifies a Posix-like interface. There’s little dispute that Posix is being put to work, however. An Air Force spokesman indicated that for the AFCAC 300 Superminis project currently approaching full Request For Procurement, compliance to the current Federal Standard covering Posix system calls was required; and as the Standard is extended to cover other operating system services, so the suppliers will be required to update their products to comply.

Viable

Posix falls into the Government’s framework of procurement standards alongside GOSIP, the Federal set of Open Systems Interconnection specifications. In an apparently aggressive timescale for the shift towards the seven-layer communications model, Version 1 of GOSIP – including Open Systems file transfer and Electronic mail, X25, Ethernet and Token Ring – becomes mandatory from August this year. Again, use of GOSIP in specifications is tempered with if it makes sense, said Radack. In practical terms, the US TCP/IP installed base is hugeand few suppliers yet have viable Open Systems products. You could specify OSI, commented Roger Cooper, a senior official at the Farmers’ Home Administration, part of the Department of the Interior. But compared with TCP/IP, you probably wouldn’t get such a good competition. Part two outlining the contracts in the pipeline, will appear shortly.