DOD awards potential $7.6B cloud contract to GDIT

By Justin Doubleday / August 29, 2019 at 12:58 PM

The General Services Administration and the Defense Department have awarded the potential 10-year, $7.6 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solution cloud services contract to a team lead by General Dynamics Information Technology. 

The DEOS Blanket Purchasing Agreement provides for collaboration and productivity tools like email, messaging, word processing, file sharing and storage across the DOD enterprise, according to today’s award announcement, which states the BPA was awarded to CSRA and its “contractor teaming partners” Dell Marketing and Minburn Technology Group. CSRA was acquired by General Dynamics in 2018.

The DEOS services will be used to “replace legacy DOD IT office applications with a standard cloud-based solution across all military services,” according to the announcement.

“DOD’s cloud strategy includes both general purpose and fit-for-purpose clouds,” DOD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said as part of the announcement. “DEOS is a great example of a fit-for-purpose cloud that supports our multi-cloud strategy. DEOS will streamline our use of cloud email and collaborative tools while enhancing cybersecurity and information sharing based on standardized needs and market offerings.”

The BPA is “built on” the Microsoft Office 365 platform, according to the announcement.

The agreement has a five-year base period, with two two-year options and one one-year option. The ceiling of the contract is $7.6 billion.

The DEOS contract award comes as the Pentagon has yet to award the more high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud services contract. New Defense Secretary Mark Esper is reviewing the JEDI program, while the DOD inspector general’s office is also investigating conflict-of-interest claims related to the procurement.

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the only two companies in contention for the JEDI contract, which contains multiple options with a maximum potential of 10 years and maximum value of $10 billion. DOD had hoped to award the contract this month after Oracle America lost its protest lawsuit in the Court of Federal Claims, but the ongoing reviews are now expected to push the award date into September at the earliest.

While the DEOS software-as-a-service contract provides for back-office collaboration and productivity tools across the department enterprise, the JEDI cloud is often described as DOD’s “war cloud.” It provides for cloud infrastructure-as-a-service and is expected to be used across the U.S. military’s warfighting functions spanning the globe, including as part of operations in austere environments at the “tactical edge.”

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