The U.S. General Services Administration announced the Alliant winners on Friday. Alliant is an umbrella program open to all federal government agencies for purchasing systems integration, technical support and other IT management services.

The Alliant awards are a re-compete for GSA, which originally that were later thrown out by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

"Alliant has been held up in court for problems with the source selection processes," explained Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president of Federal Sources, a McLean, Va. consulting firm. "The court offered GSA a variety of options, and GSA chose to do the procurement over again."

Bjorklund said Alliant has taken an unusually long amount of time to get awarded, with the program originally conceived in 2003. He says some federal customers may have chosen other contracting vehicles to acquire systems design, engineering or software development chores rather than wait for the re-compete of Alliant.

"Alliant is big, and it's complex," Bjorklund says. "The problem is that when industry and government drag out some of these acquisition contracts, it's a two-edge sword because you're taking a risk that customers will find somewhere else to get the job done."