TRANSCOM quietly takes another shot at cloud
The U.S. Transportation Command is discreetly revving up for another cloud bid, following an industry day with lead cloud service providers in August.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com
U.S. Transportation Command is quietly preparing for another shot at a cloud services contract after its planned $950 million other transaction authority deal with REAN Cloud failed earlier this year.
Sources told FCW that a request for proposal is coming this year, possibly as soon as September.
The command hosted a cloud industry day Aug. 14, complete with presentations on TRANSCOM’s Transportation Management System and long-term cloud projects as well as one-on-one meetings with prospective bidders in O’Fallon, Ill., according to documents posted on FedBizOpps.
The low-key approach seems to be an attempt to be inclusive and not repeat steps that may have jeopardized the REAN contract, which the Government Accountability Office deemed flawed in May.
TRANSCOM rescinded its deal with REAN, which had been trimmed to $65 million in March, after GAO sustained Oracle’s protest of improper use of a follow-on production OTA to procure services and lack of competition. GAO suggested ending the contract and conducting a new procurement.
The thrust of the mid-August event was to "take notes from different vendors on what they should be doing" to implement cloud services, an industry representative monitoring the procurement told FCW. And after getting admonished by GAO, TRANSCOM is looking for a chance to correct steps that "may not have been right in hindsight," the source said.
TRANSOM asked vendors about best practices for cloud managed services for large enterprises, migrations with multiple applications and old coding solutions, according to contracting documents. The command wants migrate its entire enterprise, including classified data, to the cloud and "shift to DevOps culture," according to presentation slides shown at the August event.
An industry representative familiar with the industry day and procurement told FCW that about 300 to 400 people attended the event, with approximately 30 to 40 companies represented, including cloud service providers, system integrators, independent software vendors, government and military personnel.
Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment on the industry day, as did REAN Cloud, citing its ongoing merger with Hitachi Vantara. Oracle did not return requests for comment.