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Maryland Master Contracts and Carahsoft

This guide maps the Maryland statewide IT master contracts a buyer actually rides to acquire commercial software, hardware, cloud, and technical services — and explains where a master contractor like Carahsoft fits, because Carahsoft is not a contract, it is a reseller holding awards under several vehicles. It is for engineering leads, program staff, and procurement officers inside a Maryland State agency or education entity who need to pick the right vehicle before they pick a product.

This is the companion to Maryland Procurement, which covers the process — the Board of Public Works, eMMA, COMAR Title 21, and the dollar thresholds. Read that first if you do not yet know which procurement method your purchase falls under. This document covers the vehicles you ride once a master contract is the right path.

Disclaimer. Not legal or procurement advice. Contract numbers, vendor catalogs, and contractor lists change as awards are renewed, recompeted, and amended. Verify every BPO number and vendor listing against the DoIT Statewide Contracts hub and the relevant contractor’s Maryland contract page before relying on it. Figures below reflect public DoIT and Carahsoft sources as of the last_verified date and may already be stale.

TL;DR

  • A master contract is a pre-competed statewide vehicle (identified by a BPO number) you can buy from without running a full solicitation.
  • Carahsoft is a master contractor / reseller, not a contract. It holds awards under multiple Maryland vehicles and resells ~130 software publishers through them.
  • The two software-and-services workhorses are COTS 2012 (BPO 060B2490021) for commercial software and CATS+ (BPO 060B2490023) for IT consulting and technical services.
  • Carahsoft’s resale catalog is one slice of what is available. The full DoIT COTS manufacturer catalog spans 87 master contractors and several hundred titles.
  • Buying through a master contract does not exempt you from BPW approval thresholds or MBE/SBR/VSBE goals — the process rules still apply.

What a Master Contract Is

A master contract is a statewide agreement that the State has already competed and awarded, so individual agencies can issue orders against it without re-running a full procurement. Each one is identified by a Blanket Purchase Order (BPO) number — the string like 060B2490021 you will see referenced on requisitions and in eMMA. Riding a master contract is faster than an open solicitation because the terms, ceiling prices, and vendor eligibility are already settled.

Maryland’s IT master contracts are administered by the Department of Information Technology (DoIT). Non-IT statewide contracts run through the Department of General Services (DGS) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and a separate tier of cooperative vehicles — NASPO ValuePoint, OMNIA Partners, and MEEC — sit alongside the DoIT table and are reachable through Maryland participating addenda.

DoIT Statewide IT Master Contracts

These are the active statewide IT contracts DoIT lists, with their BPO numbers and scope. The two highlighted below — COTS and CATS+ — are the vehicles most software and services purchases ride.

ContractBPOScope
Cable & Wiring Outside Plant001B5600110Outside-plant cable and wiring materials and services
Call Center / Contact Center Services 2025001B3600088General call and contact center services
Commercial Off-the-Shelf Software (COTS 2012)060B2490021COTS software, maintenance, installation, and training
Consulting & Technical Services+ (CATS+)060B2490023IT consulting and technical services across 17 functional areas
Desktop, Laptop & Tablet 2015060B5400007Desktops, laptops, monitors, tablets, peripherals
Hardware & Associated Equipment & Services 2012060B2490022Hardware and related services
ICPA — Microsoft Licensing Packages001B5600254Microsoft licensing via the OMNIA cooperative
Local Telecommunications Services 2014060B9400142Local access telephone service
Long Distance & Toll-Free 2023001B4600129Voice network services
PBX IV Telecom Equipment & Services001B0600162Telecom hardware, software, licenses, and labor
Salesforce Licenses 2023001B3600044Salesforce SaaS
Statewide Agile Resources & Teams 2024001B5600235Agile resource and team pool (rotational work orders)
Statewide Personnel System SaaS (HCM)060B3490012Cloud HCM solution
Telecom Relay & Captioned Telephone 2020F50B9400020Relay and captioning services
Wireless, Voice, Data & Accessories001B1600087Mobile devices and cellular services

Source: the DoIT Statewide Contracts page. This table is the IT slice only; non-IT statewide contracts run through DGS/DBM and the cooperative vehicles (NASPO ValuePoint, OMNIA, MEEC) sit outside it.

The Two Workhorses

COTS 2012 — Commercial Off-the-Shelf Software

BPO 060B2490021. This is the main vehicle for buying commercial software, its maintenance, installation, and training. It is a multiple-award contract: 87 master contractors hold awards under it, and the combined manufacturer catalog runs to several hundred titles. Carahsoft is one of those 87 contractors.

CATS+ — Consulting & Technical Services+

BPO 060B2490023. This is the vehicle for IT consulting and technical services, organized into 17 functional areas (application development, cybersecurity, project management, and so on). Where COTS buys the software, CATS+ buys the people who implement, integrate, or operate it.

Where Carahsoft Fits

Carahsoft (one “h” — it is frequently misspelled) is a master contractor, also called a reseller or aggregator. It does not publish a contract of its own; instead it holds awards under multiple Maryland vehicles and resells software publishers through them. When you “buy Splunk through Carahsoft on the Maryland COTS contract,” you are riding BPO 060B2490021 and Carahsoft is the awarded reseller fulfilling the order.

Carahsoft holds Maryland awards under the following vehicles:

VehicleUnderlying contractUse
MD COTS060B2490021The main software vehicle — ~130 publishers
MD HardwareHardware 2012 master contract (060B2490022)IT hardware and related services
MD CATS+060B2490023Consulting and technical services
NASPO ValuePoint Cloud SolutionsMaryland participating addendum to Carahsoft’s NASPO contractCloud / SaaS
MEECUMD-972016Maryland education entities (K-16+, libraries)

The COTS, Hardware, and CATS awards are available to any Maryland agency or education entity, and the State entered a Cloud Solutions participating addendum extending Carahsoft’s NASPO ValuePoint contract into Maryland. The practical consequence: the same publisher may be reachable through more than one Carahsoft vehicle, and which one you ride affects terms, ceiling pricing, and which approvals apply.

Software Publishers Under Carahsoft’s MD COTS

This is the vendor catalog Carahsoft currently lists under the Maryland COTS contract (~130 publishers). It is a useful starting catalog, but remember it is one contractor’s slice of the full COTS manufacturer list.

10ZiG, Abnormal AI, Accela, Acquia, Actiance, ADF Solutions, Akamai, Alteryx, AmpliFund, Anchore, Anomali, Arbola, Atlassian, Ball Aerospace, BMC, Boomi, C3, Casebook, CA Technologies, Cellebrite, Chainguard, Clio, Cloudera, Cloud Software Group, Cohesity, Collibra, Commvault, Cribl, CrowdStrike, CyberArk, CyberReef, Cylance, Databricks, Datadog, Dataiku, Datatelligent, Decision Lens, Delinea, DigiCert, Digital Guardian, Discover Technologies, Eightfold.ai, Elastic, Empyra, Equifax, Exabeam, Forescout, ForgeRock, Fortinet, Gigamon, Gimmal, GitLab, Glean, Granicus, Halcyon, HashiCorp, HCL, Hexalytics, Hootsuite, Hyland, HyTrust, Identity Automation, Infoblox, Informatica, IronNet, Jive, Kiteworks, Launchpad, Magnet Forensics, Mapbox, MarkLogic, Mimecast, MobileMind, Mobile Reach, MongoDB, MotionDSP, Netskope, New Relic, Nuance, Ontrack, OpenGov, Palo Alto Networks, Ping Identity, Planet Technologies, Precisely, Procore, Progress, Promise, Proofpoint, Puppet, Qlik, Qualtrics, QuantaHub2, Radiant Logic, Recorded Future, Red Hat, SailPoint, SAP, Smartsheet, Snowflake, Socure, SolarWinds, Splunk, Submittable, Symantec/Broadcom, Tableau, Tanium, Tenable, Text2Them, ThoughtSpot, ThreatConnect, Tonic.ai, Trifacta, Trimble, Tungsten Automation, UiPath, Veeam, VMRay, VMware, Vyopta, Wiz, Zensors, Zoho, Zscaler.

Source: the Carahsoft Maryland COTS page.

For a worked procurement and ATO path on the most-requested of these — Datadog, Splunk, CrowdStrike, Snowflake, Atlassian, and more — see the SaaS Catalog Playbook. It maps each tool to its vehicle, reseller, FedRAMP/StateRAMP status, and the one ATO caveat that matters. Note that some popular tools (GitHub, Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Okta) ride a different vehicle than COTS — the playbook says which.

Finding Everything Available

The Carahsoft list above is a single reseller’s catalog. The COTS 2012 master contract has 87 master contractors total, and the full DoIT manufacturer catalog runs to several hundred titles. These are the authoritative public sources for the complete picture.

Full COTS manufacturer catalog

The real “everything available” list — the alphabetical A→Z “Select Manufacturer” catalog: doit.state.md.us/itmc/default.aspx?smc=12. This is paginated and would need scraping to assemble into a single spreadsheet.

All 87 COTS master contractors

The complete list of awarded resellers under COTS 2012: doit.state.md.us/itmc/mcontractors.aspx?smc=12.

Carahsoft’s MD COTS page

The ~130-publisher vendor list reproduced above: carahsoft.com/buy/slg-contracts/maryland-state-contracts/md.

All Carahsoft MD vehicles

Every Maryland contract Carahsoft holds an award under: carahsoft.com/buy/slg-contracts/maryland-state-contracts.

DoIT statewide contracts hub

The master list of every statewide IT contract: doit.maryland.gov/contracts/Statewide-Contracts.

Choosing a Vehicle

Picking the right master contract is a sequence of narrowing questions:

  1. What kind of thing am I buying? Software → COTS. Hardware → Hardware 2012. People/services → CATS+. Cloud/SaaS → the NASPO ValuePoint Cloud Solutions addendum (or a dedicated SaaS contract like Salesforce 2023). Microsoft licensing → the OMNIA ICPA.
  2. Is the publisher on a vehicle I can ride? Check the DoIT manufacturer catalog for the full picture, not just one reseller’s page. The same publisher may sit under several vehicles.
  3. Which reseller and vehicle gives the best terms? Because a publisher can be reachable through multiple awards, compare ceiling pricing and terms across vehicles before issuing an order.
  4. Do the process rules still bind me? Yes. A master contract pre-competes the vendor pool, but it does not waive the Board of Public Works approval thresholds or the MBE/SBR/VSBE participation goals. A large order off a master contract can still need BPW review.