SmartBUY
is a government-wide commercial software enterprise licensing project developed
by GSA in coordination with the Office of Management & Budget that was formerly
announced on June 2, 2003.
SmartBUY
is intended to enable the government to obtain pre-negotiated enhanced discounts
and preferred pricing and terms and conditions for widely-used software products
by leveraging the purchasing power of the entire government. GSA is the SmartBUY
Executive Agent and leads the interagency team in negotiating government-wide
licenses for software. SmartBUY applies only to commercially available, commodity-type
software that is widely used in the federal government and in which the government
invests the most money.
Agencies
are strongly encouraged to use SmartBUY agreement for all software requirements
covered by a SmartBUY agreement if that software meets the agency's needs. However,
it is still up to the agency to determine which software best meets their needs
and agencies can use other contracts if they can justify that decision. The government
has entered into SmartBuy agreements with ESRI (Geographic information systems),
Manugistics (supply chain management solutions), Novell (NetWare and SuSE Linux
and others), Oracle (database management systems and business applications), ProSight
(portfolio management software) and WinZip Computing (file compression). Other
deals are reportedly in the works. SmartBUY will not cover most software and is
not appropriate for niche products. However, SmartBUY is likely to continue to
gain prominence as a contract vehicle and, thus, can be useful component of the
federal business strategy for companies that offer commodity-type applications.
