GSA Redefines ‘Pay As You Go’ Terms As Part of Cloud SIN Refresh

The General Services Administration is urging IT services vendors to update their offerings on IT Schedule 70 to account for the recent refresh of the cloud special item number and alerting contractors and agencies of a weedy—but still significant—change to how the government defines “pay as you go” contracts.

The Cloud SIN (132-40) has been around since 2015 but until recently focused only on IT products. Professional services related to cloud computing were relegated to the IT Professional Services SIN (132-51). With the recent refresh of the Cloud SIN, companies are being pushed to add their services offerings that specifically relate to cloud computing.

Vendors do not have to remove their offerings from the Professional Services SIN but are being encouraged to add cloud-specific services to the Cloud SIN, as well.

Services currently under the Professional Services category that would be appropriate for the Cloud SIN include “labor categories and/or services required to assess, prepare, refactor, migrate, integrate, develop new native cloud applications—DevOps—or govern a cloud implementation,” according to a notice posted to GSA’s Interact page. These services could be added to an existing schedule holder’s offering through a modification or through a new offer.

While GSA is eager to fill the Cloud SIN with services offerings “as soon as possible”—as contracting officials will be busy working on the Multiple Award Schedule consolidation in the coming months—the agency only wants services that are specific to cloud computing.

“Contractors must only offer specific labor categories and/or fixed price solutions—e.g. migration services, etc.—on the Cloud SIN that support activities associated with assessing cloud solutions, refactoring workloads for cloud solutions, migrating legacy or other systems to cloud solutions, providing management/governance to cloud solutions, DevOps, developing cloud native applications or other cloud-oriented activities,” the notice states. “Contractors may propose other types of relevant services, as long as they are specifically designed to work within and/or support the type of cloud products offered under 132-40.”

GSA has also adjusted how it defines “measured service,” which describes the pay-as-you-go or pay-by-the-drink model central to the concept of cloud services. Under previous definitions, contractors were able to offer yearly payment schedules for services that ultimately resembled a traditional subscription service more than an ongoing cloud as-a-service structure.

Officials noted this was a particular problem for software-as-a-service offerings.

Going forward, for an offering to qualify as a measured service, it must have “a term no longer than one month in length,” per GSA, citing standards developed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology.