John Sherman Details New Contracting Program for DOD's Multicloud Requirement

John Sherman, acting chief information officer at the Department of Defense, said the recently announced replacement to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contracting program is planned to leverage direct awards to multiple vendors of enterprise cloud services, DOD News reported Wednesday.

The initial awards under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program will provide for the department’s multicloud requirement that covers all three security levels, according to Sherman.

The JWCC is expected to align with the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration, Joint All Domain Command and Control and other department-led initiatives to support warfighter capabilities.

The new indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multi-award contract will have a potential five-year performance period, including two one-year extension periods.

DOD aims to award the new contracts by April 2022 and will reach out to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Amazon Web Services, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOGL) to determine the companies’ capability to meet the department’s urgent needs.

According to Sherman, the next step for the department is to start a full and open, competitively procured multi-award cloud contract by early 2025, when JWCC’s three-year base period is scheduled to end.

“The JWCC will serve that purpose and be a bridge to our longer term approach, allowing us to leverage cloud technology from headquarters to the tactical edge,” he added.

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