DOD picks Microsoft, AWS, Google and Oracle to bid on JWCC cloud contract
The Department of Defense has invited four hyperscale cloud providers to bid on its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract.
The department announced Friday that it has issued solicitations to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle to bid for spots on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The JWCC is DOD’s indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ), enterprise multi-cloud acquisition that has replaced the former Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, which stalled before the department could move it into operation due to a flurry of bid protests from Amazon and Oracle.
If awarded spots on the IDIQ contract, those providers would then compete for task order work under the larger contract.
Since announcing the contract in July, the DOD has been in market research mode, looking to finalize its solicitation for the contract. A DOD spokesperson told FedScoop the department decided to move forward with these four providers after studying the commercial cloud market and assessing capability statements from interested vendors as they related to JWCC’s needs set forth in a pre-solicitation notice.
Details of the final requirements, the value and other terms of the procurement haven’t been made public.
However, Danielle Metz, DOD deputy CIO for the information enterprise, did confirm broadly what the DOD is looking for. “At a high level, the JWCC requirements include providing capability and parity of service at all three classification levels, integrated cross domain solutions, global availability of tactical edge environments and enhanced cybersecurity controls,” Metz said in a statement.
John Sherman, then acting as DOD CIO, explained back in July that JWCC likely won’t be a long-term solution. The pre-solicitation notice says the contract is “intended to be for a period of performance of one 36-month base period with two 12-month option periods,” a total of five years. That will give the department the opportunity to pursue a “larger, full-and-open” multi-cloud procurement down the road, Sherman said then.
Based on the contract’s original timeline, Sherman —who has since been nominated to be the official CIO and awaits Senate confirmation — hoped the DOD would award spots on the contract by “about April 2022.”
