What is a DON ELA and How Does it Benefit the User and the DON?
Published, April 5, 2012
A Department of the Navy Enterprise License Agreement (DON ELA) is a contractual vehicle that provides the means to procure many of the widely purchased products from DON "high use" software publishers, like Microsoft. The vehicle is established to provide these products to the entire DON at the best possible price, while ensuring common terms and conditions, by leveraging the purchasing power of the entire DON. ...
In most cases, DON ELAs will be primarily software product focused. However, DON ELAs may include software related services and hardware components, such as switches, routers or database appliances, as well as related services that are necessary for the effective use and maintenance of the commercial software product.
Additional benefits of the DON ELA initiative include:
- A greater partnership between the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Management and Comptroller), Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition), DON CIO and the DON Deputy CIOs (Navy and Marine Corps). All are actively engaged in optimizing the DON's management of information technology resources, that will eventually include commercial off the shelf software, hardware, and related services;
- Workforce efficiencies associated with IT management, acquisition and financial management processes;
- Diminishing acquisition and product delivery time;
- Improved security management;
- Managing and buying software based on a more accurate set of requirements.
As Terry Halvorsen, the DON CIO, said in a recent interview with Federal News Radio: "This is all about efficiencies and saving money, and like any business if you come to the table with more money you can generally get a better price. That is what this is all about; bringing what we are already buying in terms of licenses, bundling that up and being able to go to the vendors representing a bigger customer, and generally bigger customers get better prices."
For more Fast Facts, visit: www.doncio.navy.mil/contentview.aspx?id=3805