The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched the first two of three major cloud solicitations under its STRATUS program, taking the first steps toward creating a set of enterprise wide cloud contracts.
USDA released the solicitations for Pool 2 and Pool 3. Under Pool 2, USDA plans to create a 10-year basic ordering agreement (BOA) for integration and development services. Under Pool 3, USDA will create a 10-year BOA for software-as-a-service providers.
Earlier this year, the USDA announced its intention to drive cloud adoption across the department with a new centralized cloud BOA.USDA’s Digital Infrastructure Services Center currently offers what the department calls a consolidated “easy button” for cloud infrastructure service adoption.
Through STRATUS, USDA hopes to source hyperscale cloud infrastructure services, including integration and development services and software-as-a-service, featuring individual groups of contractors for each of the three categories.
Proposals for Pool 2 are due Oct. 16. Proposals for Pool 3 are due by Oct. 27.
USDA did not say when it would release the solicitation for Pool 1.
