Perspecta protests $7.8B DEOS contract award

Less than two weeks since missing out on the Department of Defense’s $7.8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions back-office cloud contract, Perspecta has filed a protest against the award.

Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC filed its post-award bid protest of DEOS with the Government Accountability Office, according to a spokesperson with the General Services Administration, the agency leading the acquisition on behalf of the DOD.

“GSA cannot comment further as this is ongoing litigation,” the spokesperson told FedScoop.

The company filed its protest Sept. 9, and GAO has until Dec. 18 to make a decision on it.

At the end of August, General Dynamics IT, Dell and Minburn, a Virginia-based Microsoft reseller, won the contract through a teaming agreement. Together, they will provide Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based collaboration and email services to the Department of Defense under a blanket purchase agreement.

The contract runs for a base of five years with two two-year options and one one-year option.

The protest is the first bump in the road in what’s otherwise been a smooth procurement for the DEOS contract.

Meanwhile, DOD continues to face challenges against its other multibillion-dollar cloud acquisition, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. JEDI, potentially worth $10 billion over 10 years, has seen numerous pre-award protests, and is currently under a review by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and being investigated by the department’s inspector general. The competition for that contract is down to just two contractors — Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Whichever of the two ultimately falls short will almost certainly protest the Pentagon’s award, like Perspecta did for DEOS.