Lucent Lands Defense DWDM Deal
The Defense Department acknowledged in a statement late Friday that it will award Lucent a two-year contract, with the possibility of three one-year extensions. Sources close to the deal say the paperwork hasn't been finalized yet, but the total contract has an "estimated life cycle value $94,000,000" the Defense Department statement says.
Lucent is as much a systems integrator these days as it is an equipment vendor, so it's not clear how much of its own equipment Lucent will be supplying for this network.
Interestingly, even Lucent isn't sure how big a deal this one will be for the company. "We don't have any official notification on that yet," says a Lucent spokeswoman regarding the deal. So Lucent, as of Monday afternoon, was still waiting to hear how much of its bid was accepted.
What we do know, courtesy of the Defense Department's statement, is that Lucent has been awarded a "a firm fixed price, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract" to build a "broadband gigabit optical network for the Army and other DITCO [Defense Information Technology Contracting Office Agency ] customers throughout European Command and Central Command area of responsibility."
The statement also acknowledged that "twelve proposals were received" and that the bids were, in government parlance, solicited on an "unrestricted best-value competitive acquisition basis."
Not only is it a nice-sounding score for Lucent, but this kind of DWDM network will likely require several systems from Movaz Networks Inc. , which has an OEM deal with Lucent for its reconfigurable add-drop multiplexer systems (ROADMs) and other technology. (See Movaz Bags $20M More.)
Calls to the Defense Department weren't returned due to the national holiday in the U.S. Monday. Calls to Movaz were referred to Lucent.
— Phil Harvey, News Editor, Light Reading
Where come the components, sub-systems that lucent is going to use? We seem to live in a rapidly changing marketplace right now.