The Department of Defense has awarded the first set of task orders under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract to all four vendors: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
The four vendors will continue to compete for task orders under the JWCC, with each vendor expected to receive a share of the contract. The first set of awards provided each vendor with equal task orders, with the value of each task order being $3.8 million to essentially do some early poking and prodding about what JWCC could be capable of.
A Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) spokesperson confirmed the award to Breaking Defense.
“The first task orders awarded under the JWCC contract allows the JWCC Program Management Office to test cloud service offerings in a sandbox environment, validating several JWCC requirements through real world cloud consumption (e.g., proof of concepts, verification of policy-based controls),” the spokesperson said.
JWCC: The successor to JEDI
The JWCC is a $10 billion, 10-year contract that will provide the DoD with a cloud computing environment that is secure, reliable, and scalable. The contract is designed to support a wide range of DoD missions, including combat operations, intelligence gathering, and logistics.
JWCC is seen as the successor to the Pentagon’s failed Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure endeavor, or JEDI, which was awarded to Microsoft alone and was ultimately ditched in July 2021. The cancellation came amid a feud between Amazon and the Trump administration, which the company accused of tainting the $10 billion contest.
The task orders will allow the DoD to begin using the JWCC to support its missions. The DoD plans to fully transition to the JWCC by 2028.
The JWCC is the largest cloud computing contract in DoD history. It is seen as a key part of the DoD’s efforts to modernize its IT infrastructure. The contract is also seen as a major victory for the cloud computing industry, as it represents a significant endorsement of cloud computing by the DoD.
Yet, it has remained a controversial contract amongst cloud service providers as it splits capabilities across multiple vendors that some cloud experts believe will only increase cost and complexity, instead of a single-vendor award as JEDI was originally intended to be. Others believe the competition amongst vendors will reduce overall cost, and provide the DoD with best-of-breed capabilities unique to each cloud vendor that branches can then benefit from.
Cloud capability is meant to serve as a backbone for the Pentagon’s connect-everything-everywhere campaign, known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2.
Despite the controversy, the JWCC is seen as a major step forward for the DoD. The contract is expected to help the DoD save money by leveraging competitive cost structure, improve its IT infrastructure, and become more agile in its operations.
Disclaimer: The author of this article is a current employee of Google. This article does not represent the views or opinions of his employer and is not meant to be an official statement for Google, or Google Cloud.
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