Get ready to dig for billions in cloud, mobility opportunities

There are plenty of cloud and mobility opportunities for you to sink your teeth into in the federal market, but first you might have to do some digging.

“Cloud is being written in as a contract line item number in other types of contracts, so although the list we’re tracking of cloud specific work has been increasing year over year, it’s still very much embedded in a lot of other stuff. Same with mobility,” said Deniece Peterson, director, Federal Industry Analysis, Deltek.

Peterson gave a presentation on these opportunities Tuesday at Washington Technology’s cloud and mobility industry day.

Cloud and mobility are being included as parts of data center contracts, commodity IT contracts, and even broad enterprise IT support contracts as well as contracts focused on infrastructure modernization, Peterson said.

She estimated that spending on cloud technologies and related services will grow from $2.35 billion in 2015 $6.2 billion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent.

She then highlighted three mobility contracts and three cloud contracts for you to keep your eyes on.

MOBILITY

The first is the Army Desktop and Mobile Computing (ADMC-3) contract. It has a $5 billion ceiling. “Like I mentioned, it’s desktops, notebooks, tablets, mobile devices—it’s one of many things in a string of various commodity IT products that can be bought off of that vehicle,” Peterson said.

Deltek expects the RFP for this contract to be out in January with an award being made in January 2017.

The second contract is the $750 million Navy’s Wireless Services Strategic Sourcing Multiple Award IDIQ. Currently, the contract—for nationwide wireless services and devices—is held by AT&T, Sprint, and Nextel, but it is set to expire in May 2017. “We think the RFP will be out in July 2016,” Peterson said.

The third contract is NASA’s Desktop and Institutional Computing Services, or DICE, contract. It has an estimated value of $360 million. “This is one of the examples where we’re seeing an enterprise IT support contract that includes support for mobile devices,” Peterson said.

Deltek anticipates a draft RFP to hit the streets in May 2016, a final RFP in September 2016, and an award being made in May 2017.

CLOUD

The first contract is the Army Cloud Hosting Contract Vehicle. “The Army is moving designated applications to a private commercial cloud as they discovered they have over 100,000 applications across all their data centers,” Peterson said. Deltek doesn't have an estimated value on that contract.

This means the Army is looking at which applications are redundant, which ones they want to keep, and which ones they should move to the cloud.

“It covers all the different cloud service types—platform, software and infrastructure, on-premise or off-premise. It’s a new requirement, and the work will be divided across multiple performance areas,” Peterson said.

There will also be a number of on ramps, she added, which is another trend Deltek has been seeing.

Deltek estimates this contract’s solicitation to be out in January.

The second contract is the TSA IT Enterprise Infrastructure Support Services. “That’s an example where we’re seeing another enterprise IT support contract that’s very broad, but that’s the avenue they’re choosing to implement some piece of their cloud strategy,” Peterson said. There is no estimate on its value.

This contract, which has a solicitation that Deltek estimates will be out in December, will include TSA’s email, database support, personal device communication, software refresh, tech support, and security support, among other things.

Peterson said that it will be bid under the DHS EAGLE II contract as a full-and-open task order that Deltek expects will be awarded in second quarter fiscal 2016.

The third cloud contract to watch is the HHS CIO-SP3 small business on ramp. Deltek expects the solicitation date to be in March, when new companies can join the $20 billion contract.

“The point is you have to dig. You have to dig in those contracts and first provide services that are broad enough that [agencies] would find cost efficiency by including mobility in a broad contract like that,” Peterson said. Or look for strategic sourcing type vehicles where agencies are trying to streamline particular types of spending, she added.