Hewlett-Packard [HP] has begun building thin client computing into the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), with plans to install them to serve up to 7,500 end users under a pilot program, a company official said Friday.
Thin client computing effectively centralizes the hard drive and computing power away from the desktop to a server farm, leaving behind only a portal to plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor.
The process began in April and thin client systems are in use at Navy facilities in Washington, D.C., San Diego and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Bill Toti, HP’s vice president for Navy programs, said. Toti said thin client computing reduces hardware and maintenance costs. He added it is popular with the cyber security community because it becomes more difficult for users to engage in unauthorized downloads of sensitive information.
“The server knows what I am downloading,” he said. HP has also worked to increase email storage space on NMCI and to back up data by plugging into a remote location without having to use tapes stored in computers, easing the process and scaling back data recovery time in the event of a natural disaster like flooding, he said.
NMCI is the largest computing network in the U.S. government with more than 400,000 work stations and twice as many user accounts. HP is under contract to provide up to 7,500 thin client work stations and the Navy has yet to decide how it wants to proceed. The service could continue the transition as desktop systems age and could wait until it transitions to the NMCI successor known as the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN), Toti said.
The Navy earlier this year issued a request for proposals (RFP) for NGEN and plans to move to the new system by April 2014, although its ability to meet that timeframe has been questioned by congressional auditors.
HP is a prime bidder for NGEN and has teamed up with Northrop Grumman [NOC], IBM [IBM], AT&T [T] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] to submit an NGEN bid. A second team has been formed by Harris Corp. [HRS], which is an HP subcontractor on NMCI, and Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC]. That team also includes General Dynamics [GD] and Verizon Communications [VZ].
The Navy expects to award the two NGEN contracts next year, one for transport services and the other for enterprise services early next year. The Navy could award both contracts to a single team, or one to each. The total value of the contract for the first five years is estimated at $5.3 billion over the next five years.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said earlier this month the total program cost could reach as much as $38 billion through 2024. The GAO has said delays in issuing the RFP over the last couple years makes it unlikely the Navy will be able to meet the April 2014 transition and could cause costs to increase (Defense Daily, Sept. 21, 2012).