DOD's $8.2B email contract moves forward
By
Nick Wakeman
The Defense Department advances its massive commercial cloud email and collaboration contract. And just like in JEDI, potential bidders hav ea high bar to clear.
The Defense Department has released a draft solicitation for its massive email and collaboration in a commercial cloud contract, giving its most detailed look to date of its vision and strategy.
The Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract will be a single-award contract for cloud-based email and collaboration tools and has an $8.2 billion price tag.
DOD will buy email, content management, file storage, productivity tools, web conferencing, instant messaging, native audio and video, and mobility.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is competing the contract through the GSA Schedule 70 vehicle, but certain requirements place a substantial bar that bidders will need to clear first.
Most notably, bidders will need to have documentation that shows that they have reached DOD Impact Level 5 authorization when they make their Phase one quote submission.
They also must have either a DOD Impact Level 6 or provisional Level 6 authorization at the time of submission.
In print, DOD says that a bid will not be accepted if it only has a non-DOD federal agency authority to operate or only a FedRAMP moderate or high.
Those requirements will eliminate a significant number of bidders.
While it has drawn the attention or controversy of the JEDI cloud infrastructure contract, DEOS also will draw from a small universe of bidders that meet the security requirements. Likely bidders and front runners include Microsoft and Google.
The contract will be competed as a blanket purchase agreement and an award will be made on a best value criteria.
Best value will be determined by comparing the non-price factors of technical and management capabilities, and past performance. Price alone will not be the deciding factor.
As it is a BPA, DOD will not be negotiating with bidders. It will only talk to bidders to clarify elements of their proposal.
“The quoter should submit their best terms in the initial quote,” DOD says in solicitation documents.
Comments on the draft RFQ are due Feb. 12.