December 21, 2022

The U.S. Department of Defense Embraces Multi-Cloud

On Friday, December 16, 2022, The U.S. Navy awarded Amazon Web Services (AWS) a five-year contract worth $724 Million running from December 2022 through December 2028.

This is an enterprise software license agreement providing the Navy with access to the AWS commercial cloud, training and certification courses, and AWS professional services.

$9 Billion Joint Warfare Cloud Capability Contract

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) split up its massive Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract worth a total of $9 Billion between four of the major cloud providers.

The unspecified shares going to AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. Notably absent from the JWCC contract is IBM cloud, more on that in a moment.

It’s unclear whether this latest award to AWS is part of the overall JWCC contract, or is an independent contract awarded exclusively to AWS.

Regardless, it’s yet another confirmation that the U.S. military is clearly embracing the cloud.

The high-level requirements for the JWCC request for proposal (RFP) explicitly called for a multi-vendor cloud solution with the DoD having direct contracts with each cloud service provider (CSP).

High Security and Capabilities

The RFP had some explicit capability requirements, including fortified security for the entire range of classifications from unclassified to Special Access Program (SAP), from the homefront to the tactical edge, and across all warfighting domains (air, land, maritime, cyber, and space).

This is both a broad and deep set of requirements and the fact that these four CSPs can deliver on these requirements speaks volumes to their capabilities.

But Weren’t Microsoft and AWS supposed to Win?

The initial RFP, published in July 2021, called out Microsoft and AWS by name as the two CSPs anticipated to be awarded the contract as they were the only CSPs at the time that could meet all the DoD’s stringent requirements.

Since that time, both Google and Oracle have expanded their offerings to the point where now the DoD is including them in the contract award.

Where is IBM?

Notably absent from the JWCC contract is IBM cloud, apparently, they were not even solicited to bid on the project.

IBM has been included in prior U.S. Government multi-cloud projects.

IBM was included in the 2020 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) award of its Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) extension beginning in 2024 along with the four CSPs awarded the JWCC contract.

It’s likely that IBM couldn’t, or chose not to, meet the strict requirements put forth in this project.

Staying Flexible

In the U.S. DoD contracts awards website, it independently lists each of the four CSPs as being awarded a hybrid “firm-fixed-price and time-and-materials, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity” contract with a ceiling of $9 Billion.

It states that no funds are being obligated at the time of the award, and that all obligations of funds will be done for individual orders as they are issued.

Bottom Line

This is a massive program, and the way the award is written provides ultimate flexibility to the DoD on where it chooses to place its workloads, meaning where it will spend its money.

This is a wise move as technology and CSP capabilities are changing at a rapid pace, and the CSP with the best capabilities today, may not be in that position in the future.

The DoD would be wise to ensure it has full redundancy not just within each CSP, but also across CSPs, and ensure it can move all its workloads across providers swiftly and easily without impact to its operations.

If done correctly, this is a great win for the U.S. Military.

Welcome to the 21st Century!

This blog is a part of the Digital Operations blog series by Aragon Research’s Sr. Director of Research, Craig Kennedy.

Missed an installment? Catch up here!

The U.S. Department of Defense Embraces Multi-Cloud