The Department of Defense’s (DoD) $9 billion multi-vendor cloud contract made more than $200 million in task order awards, and more are on the way, a top DoD technology official said on August 16.
During remarks at the AFCEA TechNet Augusta conference in Augusta, Ga., Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Director Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, said the Pentagon has awarded 13 task orders under the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability contract so far.
“A lot of work has gone on with JWCC. I think that is a success story,” Skinner said. “We’ve got like 13 [task orders] in contracting right now and 45 packages to where the department is truly moving out on this.”
Nine of the 13 task orders are associated with Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). That’s a rebranded version of the DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort – the department’s multidomain initiative to integrate sensors across air, land, sea, cyber and now, allied network domains – to reflect a combined JADC2 development that will provide defense leaders real-time command data.
News of the 13 JWCC task orders comes on the heels of the DoD’s chief information officer (CIO) push for defense agencies to use the vehicle in new cloud buys. DoD CIO, John Sherman, issued a memo earlier this month pointing defense agencies and components to the JWCC contract for all future cloud acquisitions and top-secret cloud capabilities.
In addition to addressing future cloud purchases, the memo also told defense agencies and DoD components to transition their existing cloud contacts to JWCC upon expiration.
The memo also directs military departments to adopt JWCC for secret or top-secret cloud capabilities. When JWCC first launched, DISA officials said military service branches can continue with their existing contract vehicles. But in his memo earlier this month, Sherman encouraged them to consider JWCC for cloud procurement.
“We are working hand in hand with [the Army Enterprise Cloud Management Agency] and the other service cloud offerings to see how we can work together to make sure the department gets the best value for their cloud capabilities and cloud hosting,” Skinner said on August 16.
Skinner also stressed that for businesses that would like to join companies already making inroads into the DoD via DISA, there are alternatives for those not specializing in cloud services.
“As we look at how we align our force, as we look at the technology that we need, we have got to simplify the complexity of our environment: our force cannot be successful and cannot be as agile and maneuverable without helping us simplify that environment,” Skinner said.
“We have infrastructure as code, we have accelerators, so for those mission partners who aren’t cloud experts, we have set up an environment to include what we call Vulcan, which is our DevSecOps, that enables mission partners to leverage the cloud even faster,” he said. The general added that DISA plans to continue working with the private sector to figure out how the department can continue to leverage industry capabilities.
