https://crsreports.congress.gov
Updated November 13, 2019
DOD’s Cloud Strategy and the JEDI Cloud Procurement
In September 2017, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued
a memorandum calling for the accelerated adoption of a
Department of Defense (DOD) enterprise-wide cloud
services solution as a fundamental component of ongoing
DOD modernization efforts. As a component of this effort,
DOD sought to acquire a cloud services solution accessible
to the entirety of the Department that can support
Unclassified, Secret, and Top Secret requirements, focusing
on commercially available cloud service solutions, through
the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud
acquisition program.
As DOD carried out the acquisition process for the JEDI
Cloud program, industry and Congress focused significant
attention on DOD’s intent to award the JEDI Cloud contract
to a single company. On October 25, 2019, DOD
announced it had awarded the JEDI Cloud contract to
Microsoft.
Background
Broadly speaking, cloud computing refers to the practice of
remotely storing and accessing information and software
programs on demand, instead of storing data on a
computer's hard drive or accessing it through an
organization’s intranet. This practice relies on a cloud
infrastructure, a collection of hardware and software that
may include components such as servers and a network.
Cloud infrastructure can be deployed privately to a select
user group, publicly through subscription-based commercial
services available to the general public, or through hybrid
deployments that combine aspects of both private and
public cloud infrastructure.
DOD has been critical of its cloud services implementation
to date, describing it as “decentralized” and creating
“additional layers of complexity” that impede shared access
to common applications and data across the department.
DOD has also acknowledged that its prior lack of “clear
guidance on cloud computing, adoption, and migration” has
led to “limited capability … and inefficient acquisitions that
cannot take advantage of economies of scale.”
DOD’s Cloud Strategy
DOD publicly released its Cloud Strategy in February 2019.
The strategy described plans to extend cloud computing
services across the Department by developing a “multi-
cloud, multi-vendor … ecosystem composed of a General
Purpose and [multiple] Fit For Purpose” clouds. DOD
anticipates that the JEDI Cloud acquisition program will
ultimately lead to a foundational enterprise-wide General
Purpose cloud suitable for the majority of DOD systems
and applications. DOD envisions Fit For Purpose clouds as
task-specific clouds, or on-premises cloud solutions, to be
used in limited situations where the General Purpose cloud
is “not capable of supporting mission needs.”
The JEDI Cloud Program
DOD issued its Request for Proposals (RFP) for the JEDI
Cloud on July 26, 2018; the RFP closed on October 9,
2018. In early April 2019, DOD completed its initial
downselect from four qualified proposals submitted by
IBM, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle
America. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft remained in
contention for the contract at that time.
Contract Structure
DOD conducted a full and open competition for a single
award Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) firm-
fixed price contract for commercial items. The contract
period of performance is structured as a two-year base
ordering period, with three additional option periods, for a
potential total of 10 years (see Table 1). DOD specified
that the minimum guaranteed award is $1 million; the
Department has estimated that contract spending across the
contract’s base ordering period will total approximately
$210 million. The contract is expected to have a ceiling of
$10 billion across the entire potential 10-year period of
performance. Under an ID/IQ contract, the government is
only required to purchase the minimum amount specified in
the contract, and may ultimately choose not to reach the
contract’s ceiling.
Table 1. Anticipated Period of Performance
Source: JEDI Cloud RFP, “Combined Synopsis/Solicitation for
Commercial Items.”
JEDI Cloud Source Selection Process
DOD indicated that the JEDI Cloud contract would be
awarded to the offeror whose proposal met specified
requirements and represented the best value to the
government, based on a two-step evaluation process. In the
first step, offerors were evaluated against seven “sub-
factor” performance-based criteria. Offerors’ proposals
were deemed acceptable or unacceptable for each
individual sub-factor as considered sequentially. A
judgement of unacceptable for any sub-factor immediately
disqualified a proposal from further consideration. If a
proposal received a mark of acceptable for each sub-factor,
it proceeded to the second phase of the source selection
process, where it was then evaluated against five additional
technical factors, together with the offeror’s price
proposals, to determine a competitive range of offerors.
Qualifying offerors—Microsoft and Amazon Web
