The Pentagon’s sequel to JWCC — dubbed JWCC Next — will similarly be a multi-award contract “but at a bigger scale” than its predecessor, according to John Hale, product management and development chief at the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Defense officials are finalizing the acquisition strategy for JWCC Next, engaging with industry and mission partners across DOD and are aiming to publish a draft request for proposal later this year before it goes out to bid.
“I would expect [JWCC Next] to hit the streets probably in 18 months,” Hale said on March 6 at the OpenText Government Summit.
To date, JWCC has awarded a total of $2.3 billion in task orders to the four cloud service providers, according to DISA, which manages the contract. Those task orders cover a wide range of mission-critical cloud requirements — some of which are classified — across the Defense Department and its many components.
Hale said that while JWCC enabled Defense customers to harness the power and functionality of the four leading hyperscale cloud providers, JWCC Next aims to bring them entire cloud ecosystems and third-party marketplaces—including from smaller vendors.
“What mission partners really want is the ecosystems built around the hyper-scaler provider. There’s a whole ecosystem of third-party providers that are built around hyper-scaler providers, and that’s what mission partners want,” Hale said. “They want the entire enchilada.”
Hale said about 180 cloud providers meet pentagon major cloud contract works
