Recently on TechSource we’ve been focused on the growth in cloud consumption and acquisition. As we looked at trends in federal cloud procurement, it became clear that buying cloud services is not your ordinary acquisition. “It was more than a two-year process, we went through two protests,” said Peggy O’Connor, the hosting CRM chief for the Interior Department, of her agency’s $10 billion Foundation Cloud Hosting Services IDIQ contract, during a panel at the Amazon Web Services government symposium June 25.
O’Connor said Interior undertook a four-month-long hosting study, to look at what applications would be moved to the cloud. Between 30 and 50% of the apps have been shifted, but it has been challenging.
“What we’ve learned [is that] our customers want services immediately, to start within hours,” she said.
Another lesson learned, O’Connor added, is that “our IDIQ is awesome, but we haven’t caught up on agile procurement.”
NASA took a different approach with its WestPrime contract, said Roopangi Kadakia, web services executive at the space agency.
“We made this the open government initiative for NASA,” she said. “We found [GSA’s] Schedule 70 to be the fastest way to go.”
Kadakia said she had to persuade the chief procurement officer, NASA general counsel, and the inspector general that it would work.
“I wanted to show that you can integrate security into the actual procurement,” she said, adding that the inspector general loved it. “She was awed,” Kadakia said.
John Sankovich, vice president of CIO solutions at Info Reliance, said that maintaining flexibility in how agencies do their procurements is critical. “As soon as the contract is awarded, [you’re] already overwhelmed by changes,” he said. “You [can] map to a certain level of AWS part numbers, but don’t specify” them.
Kadakia offered a few lessons she’s learned about cloud services procurement.
O’Connor said that her procurement effort “was not resourced appropriately at the beginning.” She suggested that it is important the proper expertise is on the team, and that the individuals buy in to the acquisition plan.
As for procurement flexibility, “Our contract built in refresh for technology [and] pricing,” O’Connor said. “When we send out a requirement, vendors can propose what we ask for, or an alternative” that achieves the same – or better – functionality.