In an effort to save their electronic messaging  system, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is now seeking  a sole and authentic Hewlett-Packard contract to replace its current networking equipment.

What the agency is presently using is starting to malfunction and deteriorate. A recent report mentioned that even the Office of General Counsel has lost access to e-mail for a whole day. Almost the same scenario is being experienced by Senior NARA managers, including the Office of the Archivist.

This entire dilemma is caused by defective equipment. Employees have been bothered by inconsistent access to the e-mail. Unfortunately, as a result of the competitive bidding process, the agency purchased products that were later on identified as counterfeits or came from the grey market. Thus, HP would not support any faulty equipment or parts.

In a letter along with the RFP (request for purchase form) stating the justifications and reasons why they need to replace their current equipment, they said, "Simply stated, absent the HP replacement parts the NARA network cannot once again become a fully functioning e-mail system."

Another interesting quote from the letter mentioned: "NARA must leave the open market because of the mission-essential nature of reliable e-mail service. To remedy what has become an intolerable impact on employees’ productivity, no further effort to obtain competition will be contemplated."

HP EVP Dave Donatelli joins Wikibon’s Dave Vellante from Barcelona to talk about converged infrastructure.

NARA would need to purchase HP-genuine networking products to the tune of $121,000 in order to restore full operations of e-mail system of over 1,400 users within the agency.  It’s a good opportunity for HP to spread its product reach, especially in an area where Google and Microsoft tend to take over.  Yet the case for NARA is not uncommon for many on an enterprise level, with archiving and access to those archives being of increasing importance thanks to our data overload these past few years.  Streamlining storage and protecting that data is the challenge of this decade, and the likes of HP are in the forefront of addressing this need.