DISA extends RFP deadline for $427 million cloud contract
By
Frank Konkel
Pentagon's IT shop is seeking "state of the art" cloud services for its Enterprise Storage Service initiative.
The Defense Information Systems Agency wants "state of the art" cloud services with on-demand storage capabilities for petabytes and more of the Department of Defense's growing volumes of data, according to a recently updated request for proposal on FedBizOpps.gov.
DISA is willing to pay a premium for its Enterprise Storage Service (ESS II) contract – up to $427 million for a four-year deal with two one-year options -- and has extended its proposal deadline from Oct. 21 to Oct. 28.
The contract would replace DISA's $700 million 2007 deal with ViON Corp., and its requested specs are modernized for IT life in a big data-driven Defense environment. It calls for scalable, large-scale storage for structured and unstructured data – both classified and non-classified – to be developed by a contractor at up to 18 DISA facilities within the U.S. and six other DISA-approved locations worldwide. It must cover present and future DISA demands for storage solutions.
DISA's attempt to provide storage services as a utility, where the contractor provides hardware, software, software maintenance, licensing and other services, is part of a growing effort in government to increase cost-effectiveness in IT.
The ESS II contract demands the contractor provide new hardware and all necessary software for the project. But once developed, the government will maintain day-to-day operational control of the storage environment and all oversight responsibilities.
"The ESS II requirement is to obtain reliable, responsive, and cost effective storage infrastructure services of "on-demand" storage capabilities for specified chipset architecture in both DISA and other DISA-approved locations, which are both in the continental United States (CONUS) and outside of the continental United States (OCONUS)," the RFP states. "DISA's goal is to obtain a dynamically scalable storage capability utilizing an on-demand service approach, for new equipment, that will quickly adjust to changes in storage and throughput requirements, both increases and decreases, and is priced on a utility ("as used") basis or tiered structure."