- DISA has issued a solicitation for the JWCC UCM Core IDIQ
- The multiple-award IDIQ has a $21.6 billion ceiling and a 10-year ordering period
- Offers are due Oct. 6
The Defense Information Systems Agency has begun soliciting bids for the potential 10-year, $21.6 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Unified Cloud Marketplace, or JWCC UCM, Core indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide the Department of War with secure, multivendor cloud computing services worldwide.
According to a solicitation notice published Tuesday, offers are due Oct. 6. Questions regarding the solicitation are due no later than Friday, Sept. 11.
DISA’s Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois is managing the procurement, which is structured as a full-and-open, multiple-award IDIQ open to U.S.-based hyperscale commercial cloud service providers.
Why Is DISA Pursuing the JWCC UCM Core Contract?
The requirement stems from the Pentagon’s push for an extensible, secure global multivendor cloud capability capable of supporting warfighting needs across all classification levels, from Unclassified through Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, and Impact Levels 2, 4, 5 and 6, according to the performance work statement.
The effort is tied to DOW’s Fulcrum IT strategy for fiscal years 2025 through 2029, which calls for innovative IT solutions to reduce reliance on legacy systems and strengthen the department’s cyber posture.
Program objectives include resilient and highly available services, global accessibility across classification levels, centralized management with distributed control, zero-trust security, AI and advanced data analytics capabilities, and support for tactical and operational edge environments, including denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited-bandwidth conditions.
What Is the Scope of the Contract?
The JWCC UCM Core performance work statement organizes contractor responsibilities into seven tasks:
- Program management — Contractors must identify key personnel and submit a program management plan, coordinating meetings and reviews with the JWCC UCM Program Management Office, including subtasks on identifying key personnel and program management office responsibility.
- Operations — Covers delivery of authorized cloud service offerings capable of operating at operational and tactical edge levels, with subtasks spanning availability and resiliency, self-service and edge devices and services.
- Fortified security — Requires contractors to implement cyber defenses aligned with the DOD’s zero-trust architecture, including subtasks on auditing, logging and monitoring, encryption and logical separation and supply chain risk management.
- Integration/interoperability — Calls for seamless connectivity across diverse systems, clouds, applications and data sources, with subtasks on secure data transfer and application programming interfaces.
- Data transfer and portability — Addresses the ability to move data and applications within and outside the cloud environment in standardized formats.
- Centralized management and distributed control — Enables the department to apply security policies, monitor compliance and automate account provisioning, with subtasks on financial operations and policy implementation, automation and monitoring.
- Desired capabilities — Encompasses additional features such as a third-party marketplace and software-as-a-service offerings for mission owners, including subtasks on advanced edge capabilities and additional cloud support packages.
The contract will support infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service offerings — collectively referred to as anything as a service — for federal government-wide customers, from the strategic level to the tactical edge.
How Does the Solicitation Build on Previous JWCC Efforts?
The new solicitation builds on the Pentagon’s broader push under the JWCC program. In 2022, DOW awarded Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle positions on the potential $9 billion JWCC contract, the multivendor IDIQ that gave the department enterprisewide cloud access across all classification levels and security domains for the first time.
Mission owners have since built on that foundation. The Navy’s PEO Digital awarded Google and Oracle JWCC task orders covering cross-cloud interoperability, Impact Level 6 authorization and air-gapped tactical edge options, an approach later carried forward under the Neptune program’s task orders.
DISA had also signaled that a successor vehicle was coming. DISA Chief of Product Management and Development John Hale outlined plans for JWCC-Next, aimed at extending access beyond the four hyperscalers to third-party vendors and ancillary services. Katie Arrington, a previous Wash100 awardee who formerly performed the duties of chief information officer at DOW, said the next iteration would open competition to smaller, non-traditional cloud service providers, while DISA has aligned its acquisition approach with DOW’s broader reform push.
