GSA Spends Over $100 Million for New Cloud Services

The General Services Administration is the latest agency to commit big bucks to cloud computing, awarding Laurel, Maryland-based Aquilent a five-year blanket purchase agreement for cloud services worth up to $100 million.

Awarded through GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, or OCSIT, the contract will be a GSA-wide procurement vehicle, meaning any organization or department within GSA has a quick route by which to procure many variations of cloud services.

Aquilent and its partners will provide customers a broad range of cloud services, “from cloud hosting to cloud-managed services to cloud architecture, development and security,” according to a press statement.

GSA officials said the procurement is part of the agency's mission to be more agile in how it provides services to other agencies.

“Being able to develop products quickly, and have the ability to scale them up are hallmarks of the agile design process that OCSIT and 18F are implementing at GSA and across government,” said Phaedra Chrousos, associate administrator of the citizen services office. Chrousos also oversees the 18F digital team. “Having easy access to infrastructure services will dramatically reduce the time to get products in the hands of users.”

One of Aquilent's key partners in executing the GSA contract will be Amazon Web Services.  Aquilent will leverage the AWS cloud however its new customers at GSA require.

“This is a truly innovative solution for GSA,” said Aquilent’s chief technology officer Mark Pietrasanta. “All of GSA now has easy access to nearly any kind of cloud hosting and cloud-managed services necessary to achieve their mission and enhance citizen engagement. Providing better service to our citizens is the bottom-line value, and we’re thrilled to partner with GSA on enabling this through the use of advanced cloud services.”

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