PETALUMA -- GC Micro, a Petaluma-based distributor of information technology hardware, was authorized on Oct. 3 to sell to federal government buyers under a NASA-managed contract.
The company could see sales of $10 million to $15 million a year under the contract, according to founder and CEO Belinda Guadarrama. Last year GC Micro had total revenue of $65 million.
[caption id="attachment_100976" align="alignleft" width="208"] Belinda Guadarrama, GC Micro CEO and founder[/caption]
The entire NASA contract, which allows purchases up to $20 billion over the next 10 years, covers many contractors such as GC Micro. The contract is described by the government as a "Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement V, Government-wide Acquisition Contract." "We’re excited that we’re included on the new NASA contract,” Ms. Guadarrama said. Any federal agency can purchase products or software under the contract.
“We might be selling to the NSA (National Security Agency), the Department of Agriculture, all those different agencies,” Ms. Guadarrama said. “NASA is the vehicle, but in those cases we are not actually selling to NASA.”
GC Micro sells information technology products, mostly hardware such as servers and routers, but also including software, from some 1,700 vendors, and including nearly 280,000 individual items. The federal government classifies companies such as GC Micro as a value-added reseller. “We put solutions together” for the federal government or other customers, such as IBM, Cisco, Ms. Guadarrama said. The company also sells maintenance contracts, managed through other providers. “We are clearly more on the hardware side than the software side.”
The company sells large IBM hard drives, HP servers, and routers and switches from Cisco Systems, for example. Beyond government buyers, GC Micro sells to Fortune 1000 companies and contractors. “Technology changes so quickly so often, there’s always going to be a demand for it,” Ms. Guadarrama said.
Some data sets analyzed by NASA are enormous. “What do you do with all the information from the Mars rover,” Ms. Guadarrama said. Two rover vehicles operated for more than six years from 2004 to 2011. “Now you’ve got all this information,” she said, that can be stored on giant terabyte IBM drives, with battery backups and line conditioning. “I don’t think people realize how much goes into that. It’s a little bit different than turning on your iPad and looking something up on the Internet.”
Ms. Guadarrama started GC Micro in Novato in 1986 then moved it to Petaluma about 10 years ago. The company, initially focused primarily on software, has 42 employees.
Originally from Texas, Ms. Guadarrama worked with the state’s government managing employment and other records for about 10 years. She worked with IT departments to develop systems needed to store and use the information.
