Small Companies to be Included in DOD’s New Enterprise Cloud Contract

The Department of Defense intends to extend procurements made under the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability contract to small cloud providers.

Speaking at a Potomac Officers Club event, Danielle Metz, DOD deputy CIO for information enterprise, confirmed that JWCC awards will not be exclusive to hyperscale cloud service providers and will eventually be open to any company capable of meeting the department’s common and unique mission sets.

The DOD’s cloud requirements remain unclear as market research is not slated to begin until April 2023, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

Metz anticipates that the department will be much more “cloud fluent” and that there would be more technical innovations available across industry once market research begins.

The department previously made clear that it will initially be entertaining proposals from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Both companies were in the running for the canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract and are deemed capable of meeting enterprise defense cloud requirements.

John Sherman, DOD’s chief information officer, recently told reporters that testing and modifications will be conducted in the coming years in hopes of fully realizing JWCC by 2025.

The multi-vendor JWCC contract fosters a more competitive acquisition strategy unlike JEDI, which left the DOD with one fixed cloud provider.

Sharon Woods, executive director of the DOD’s Cloud Computing Program Office, said in an interview with GovernmentCIO Media & Research that the contract terms under JWCC will ensure that the department is continually receiving the best tech solutions that the commercial cloud marketplace has to offer.