Cut corners: Earlier this year, the United states of america Department of Defense force (DoD) canceled the JEDI contract, which had been awarded to Microsoft more than ii years agone and was worth around $10 billion over ten years. The counterfoil was due to several factors ranging from evolving technical requirements to a seemingly endless cycle of laurels protests by Microsoft'south competitors. The section quickly followed the cancellation with an updated multi-vendor initiative designed to meet their technical needs while expanding the puddle of potential cloud providers.

A new multibillion dollar solicitation for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) was formally sent to several major deject providers on Fri. The solicitation was sent to AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle post-obit DoD'due south previous assessments of multiple cloud service providers and their technical ability to meet the new procurement's requirements.

The JWCC contract is aimed at providing cloud services similar to those in the previous JEDI contract likewise as new capabilities identified since the honor's cancelation. The new program too intends to encompass other next generation programs such as the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration (ADA) initiatives.

A solicitation release doesn't mean the authorities is set to write big checks to these cloud providers quite yet. Recipients must provide targeted proposal responses to the JWCC solicitation request. Once submitted, those responses will exist evaluated by DoD procurement and legal teams using a formal, structured review procedure to decide which vendor(s) are all-time positioned to provide the requested services.

All proposals are evaluated against the same criteria to identify vendors with the highest probability of success, lowest possible risk, and most realistic cost estimates. This is one scenario where a cheaper offer does non necessarily mean a better offering.

The resulting contract will be awarded to successful cloud providers under an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.

An IDIQ contract means the successful vendors tin can supply an indefinite quantity of products or services (as requested by the government) over a fixed period of time. The accolade itself does non guarantee work or funding to a vendor, but rather serves as a hunting license giving the pre-qualified recipient the ability to provide services for any piece of work issued nether that IDIQ contract.

While the JWCC solicitation may exist a "return of the JEDI" scenario attempting to obtain cloud support under a new name, at that place is no guarantee that the procurement won't experience the same types of protestation delays that plagued the previous JEDI try. DoD's goal is to negotiate whatsoever IDIQ awards with qualified vendors by the third quarter of 2022. Simply when billions of dollars are on the line, y'all can bet at that place is no such thing as a gracious loser. Just ask Amazon.