Air Force headed toward full-and-open competitions for EITaaS pilots
By
Nick Wakeman
Over the next few months, the Air Force will begin work to transition its Enterprise IT as a Service pilots from Other Transaction Authorities to traditional contracts.
The Air Force has been using Other Transaction Authorities to field several pilots exploring Enterprise IT as a Service, but is now preparing to shift that work to more traditional contracting methods.
Col. Robert King, the lead on Air Force EITaaS initiaitves, said that in the next few months they plan to issue more requests for information and are planning industry days to discuss the transition from pilots to so-called production contracts.
A solicitation would likely be released sometime during fiscal 2021, King said during his presentation at a virtual WT Power Breakfast Friday morning.
The Air Force has awarded three pilots through OTAs:
- Networks as a Service, held by AT&T and Microsoft.
- End-user services, inherited by Science Application International Corp. through its acquisition of Unisys Federal.
- Compute and Store, held by Accenture.
King’s presentation also provided an overview of the Air Force’s goals for its EITaaS initiatives and they will sound familiar to anyone managing complex IT operations: modernize, stabilize and defense.
EITaaS includes management and deployment of networks, devices, cloud, computing at the edge and tools.
The approach also is a way to bring a more consistent funding model to IT operations because the Air Force is buying a capability and not the hardware and other infrastructure. This allows the Air Force to keep pace with changing technologies.
Security is a big factor as well and changes how the Air Force will secure applications, data and devices. King said EITaaS is a way to modernize the user experience by bringing in new technologies.
Some of the Air Force’s guiding principles have been adopting best of breed commercial technologies, understanding risk, continuous improvement and communications.
The Air Force has been making a push to gathering more feedback through user surveys and automated tools that test and gather information on network performance, vulnerability, the cloud and compliance with service level agreements.
Some of those tools include Ixia, Riverbed Aternity, ServiceNow and Dynatrace.
The Air Force doesn’t operate in a vacuum of course. King said that both the Army and Defense Information Systems Agency are working with the Air Force to share best practices and lessons learned.
King’s presentation was followed by an industry panel with executives from Microsoft and Leidos, plus former Unisys Federal President PV Puvvada. Look for more coverage next week.