DOD Delays Award of Enterprise Cloud Computing Contracts Until December

The Department of Defense is pushing back to December the awarding of contracts for its multi-vendor enterprise cloud computing program, according to top officials. Officials previously said that awards for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract could be issued by April.

DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman, a speaker at the Potomac Officers Club’s upcoming 3rd Annual CIO Summit, said that the delay will give the department more time to conduct due diligence with the contract’s four bidders, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

“I’ve told the team we’re going to make sure we do this right. Take the time that they need so we can stick the landing on this,” said Sherman, a 2022 Wash100 winner.

The CIO stressed that there are no issues with the procurement and that the DOD only wants to get the program right.

JWCC has a ceiling value of $9 billion and includes a three-year base performance period and two option years. The four bidders—Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle—are expected to compete for work at the task order level.

DOD officials consider the program to be critical for major defense efforts such as the Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative.

JWCC serves as a replacement for the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract, which the DOD scrapped in July 2021 following several legal battles among its bidders. 

In a press release, the DOD said that JEDI no longer meets its needs due to “evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy and industry advances.”