DISA’s milCloud 2.0 to Sunset in Summer 2022

The Pentagon’s information technology arm confirmed plans to cease the use of its milCloud 2.0 cloud service in 2022, marking the impending end to an on-premise infrastructure-as-a-service offering that some defense components have leaned on for years. 

June is the deadline for the next option period on the contract. When that time comes, the Defense Information Systems Agency will not exercise the option and the deal with General Dynamics Information Technology will expire, according to a DISA spokesperson.  

“The primary focus now is informing all of our mission partners so we can immediately collaborate on next steps,” the official told Nextgov in an email on Thursday. “Once we have been able to connect with all of our mission partners in the coming weeks, we will be in a better position to discuss DISA’s overarching hosting and compute strategy within the context of DISA’s recently released Strategic Plan.”

DISA announced a nearly $500 million dollar award for milCloud 2.0 to Virginia-based CSRA in 2017. GDIT later acquired that company and ultimately operated as the primary contractor to build and run the service. 

MilCloud 2.0 went live in 2018—first providing on-premise, unclassified cloud options and then more off-premise ones with support from Amazon Web Services. Typically, defense and fourth estate agencies would use the services for cloud migrations, application modernization, new application development and for some emerging technology capabilities.  

Earlier this year, DISA announced that milCloud 2.0 was being certified for use on classified wordloads hosting the government’s secret data. 

When the cloud service offering first came to be, only AWS was cleared as the only commercial cloud provider able to host that data, but other corporations have since been approved. Also more recently, DOD unveiled the multibillion-dollar Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program and issued formal solicitations to AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle for enterprisewide commercial cloud services.

DISA’s spokesperson said the determination to not exercise the milCloud 2.0 option down the line was made as part of its Strategic Program Assessment process. The agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, kicked off that effort this year to ensure IT funds were being properly spent on value-adding resources.

 “The department has a critical need for on-prem cloud,” the spokesperson said. 

They added that going forward, DISA’s Hosting and Compute Center, or HaCC, “will aggressively work with our industry and mission partners to migrate customers to commercial cloud or another viable environment prior to the sunset date,” and help mitigate impacts along the way for milCloud 2.0 users. 

The official did not confirm the number of workloads or mission partners the offering currently includes. 

Though they didn’t say when the company was alerted of the contract’s termination, a GDIT spokesperson told Nextgov that the vendor “successfully executed” the program and met all contractual obligations. 

“We continuously enhanced milCloud 2.0 with new capabilities and delivered on-premise and general-purpose cloud services to meet demand and advances in technology,” the spokesperson said. “GDIT will continue to support customers currently leveraging milCloud 2.0 and stands ready to partner with the [DOD] as they continue to evolve their enterprise cloud strategy.”

The agency’s announcement regarding the end of the program “highlights the always evolving nature of cloud computing and how DISA knowledge of cloud has matured,” according to Neil Kronimus, director of cloud services at Sev1Tech.

"When the contract was awarded back in 2017, full understanding of cloud was still in its infancy and cloud service providers were still trying to completely understand the federal marketplace.  DISA’s milCloud 2.0 was evolutionary and correct at the time,” Kronimus explained in an email to Nextgov. “Now in 2021, DISA has grown in understanding and cloud service providers have grown to meet federal demands. milCloud 2.0, a great solution for 2017, but as with all technology, cloud has evolved to the point where it is relevancy is not as important and DISA made the tough decision to move forward."

Fedscoop first reported the news.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to add further context from Krominus.