Roundup: NASA, PG&E, Limelight, Akamai

NASA to spend over $4 Billion on IT Services. Federal Computer Week reports that NASA is planning on opening for competition a series of IT services contracts worth an estimated $4.28 billion.  Some Request For Proposals (RFPs) could be out as soon as September 22 for the agency-wide Information Technology Infrastructure Integration Program at NASA.     Included in the consolidation project is a contract for data center operations, facility management and hosting services for NASA's Enterprise Data Center (NEDC).  This contract could be worth $1.5 billion over five years and is due to be awarded in May 2010.

PG&E starts rebates for data storage. Pacific Gas & Electric has added thin provisioning and MAID data storage systems to the data center technologies it will pay people to install. According to the GreenTech Media article data centers in northern California use up about 2.5% of the power, compared to about 1.5% nationwide. Beyond looking at other storage technologies for possible rebates, PG&E is looking at developing incentives for thermal energy storage.

LimeLight CDN used to roll out Brightcove Adobe Flash Media server. Online video platform provider Brightcove announced Monday that it has rolled out broad support for Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 through the Limelight Networks content delivery network.  Brightcove has also introduced on-demand access to advanced security options for video stream encryption to the company's global customer base.  The BusinessofVideo.com blog points out that Limelight and Brightcove have been working together to sell to Akamai accounts as a team.  It was rumored last week that Google was weighing the acquisition of Britcove for between $500 and $700 million.

Akamai managed delivery of virtualized desktops. Akamai announced Monday a managed Internet service for optimizing delivery of virtualized applications and desktops.  The offering is targeted at companies wanting to deliver applications over virtual desktop infrastructure products offered by companies such as Citrix, Microsoft and VMWare.  VMWare's Scott Davis outlines the Desktop Vision in a Monday blog post.   Desktop virtualization is a hot topic, and is set to take off in 2010.