The Department of Defense’s (DoD) $9 billion multi-vendor cloud contract, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), has made more than $260 million in task order awards as it approaches the one-year mark, a DoD official said on Nov. 14.
During a Federal News Network webinar, Ryan McArthur, JWCC program manager at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said as the program reaches its one-year mark, he continues to see huge demand across the department, especially from the combatant commands and fourth estate defense agencies.
“Over the last year we have awarded 35 task orders worth a total of over $260 million,” McArthur said. “We have another 38 acquisition packages that are currently in the pipeline right now that are that are working through the process.”
McArthur added that the program office continues to work through the process of awarding task orders learning how to best work through the process. On average, the timeframe for awarding a JWCC task order is 27 days, he explained.
Nearly a year has passed since the DoD awarded JWCC cloud contracts to Amazon Web Services, Google Support Services, Microsoft, and Oracle. The multiple-award contract vehicle provides the DoD the opportunity to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from the commercial Cloud Service Providers at the speed of mission, at all classification levels, from headquarters to the tactical edge.
McArthur points out that the biggest lesson learned over the past year has been having a “dynamic team” running the JWCC program, as every acquisition need and requirement is unique. A dynamic team allows for needed expertise to ensure task orders are awarded “at speed,” he explained.
“Every session, every acquisition, they have different requirements. You can have the same mission and the same acquisition, but all the requirements can be completely different from each other. But we what we’ve learned is that having a team that works dynamically with each other is what’s important, that they’re integrating,” McArthur said, adding that this foundation has been especially important as the number of the combatant commands and defense agencies they serve continue to grow.
To date, the program office is working with 50 other mission partners across the department to adopt JWCC.
Most recently, the program office has onboarded the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), one of the combatant commands responsible for providing air, land, and sea transportation across the globe to meet national security needs, to the list of defense organizations leveraging the JWCC program.
“We’re in the middle of moving (USTRANSCOM) classified workloads into JWCC and currently have active operational missions that are in the classified space that are also being moved over to JWCC,” McArthur said.
In addition, the program office is also in the middle of moving several missions run by the DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, which has four JWCC task orders in operations. DoD Special Operations Command is also jumping on board and preparing to leverage JWCC task orders.
