Vendors Flock to $450 Million DISA Commercial Cloud Buy
Amazon Web Services is one of the bidders. Flickr user merydith
By
Bob Brewin
Amazon, defense contractors, and computer and telecom firms eye procurement.
The $450 commercial cloud procurement planned by the Defense Information Systems Agency has attracted interest from a wide swath of defense contractors, cloud service vendors, storage vendors, telecommunications firms and top-line computer companies, according to DISA’s list of attendees at a July 12 presolicitation conference.
Ninety-two vendors sent a total of 159 representatives to the conference, with Amazon Web Services topping the alphabetically ordered list, DISA disclosed on Thursday. IBM and Oracle topped the list of representatives at the conference, with each fielding a team of six.
Defense contractors eyeing the commercial cloud procurement included Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Computer Sciences Corp, General Dynamics, Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, reseller CGI Federal and storage vendor EMC also attended the conference. AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon all sent more than one representative to the conference.
The Homeland Security Department also sent a representative to the conference: Nancy Eyl, assistant counsel to the DHS inspector general.
DISA plans to issue a formal request for proposals for the commercial cloud contract next month. The agency told vendors at the conference it could award multiple indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts by what it dubbed service lines: data storage, Web and database hosting, and virtual machines that run applications.
On July 22, DISA pushed back another part of its cloud strategy -- a $427 million procuremenmt of hybrid cloud data storage service, with vendors supplying hardware housed in the agency’s data centers -- until the after the start of the new fiscal year, which begins October 1.
(Image via Flickr user merydith)