DISA Set to Release milCloud 2.0 RFP in a Few Weeks

In just a matter of weeks, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) will open the process for requesting proposals for the next round in the U.S. Defense Department’s cloud services offering. DISA’s pre-solicitation notice serves as notification to industry of the upcoming request for proposal (RFP) package for DISA's milCloud 2, Phase 1 (m2P1) contract, a government-offered service that, while not a completely commercial cloud-based system, leverages commercial products.

The anticipated release date of the RFP package is on or about June 6, according to a pre-solicitation posted on Federal Business Opportunities. 

The m2P1 acquisition seeks to bring commercial infrastructure services into Defense Department facilities, connected to military networks in a private deployment model.  

DISA is building its acquisition and requirements strategy for its overall milCloud 2.0 effort, the next program phase that is a “completely outsourced capability,” Alfred Rivera, director of DISA’s Development and Business Center, said earlier this year.

The government is banking on the potential of rather significant cost savings by tapping a service that will not be built nor maintained by the Defense Department, officials have said.

The solicitation and resulting contract will consist of a one-year base period, with four one-year options. No ceiling has been specified.   

The abundance of private cloud-based services makes federal reliance on industry a clear choice, though the push for more industry involvement comes with some restrictions and hesitation. “Cloud computing is an important technology—it's a paradigm that we have adopted in DISA and the Department of Defense to be more agile,” DISA Chief Technology Officer David Mihelcic said in January. “But it doesn't solve every problem. It doesn't guarantee huge cost savings, but it is a technology that we are taking advantage of.”

Commercial cloud service providers will build, operate and maintain milCloud 2.0 on DOD property, used exclusively for DOD data and users, John Hale, chief of the DISA cloud portfolio, said at AFCEA's Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium in Washington, D.C., in April. Even as DISA progresses with cloud computing, it still plans to offer hosting in traditional data centers, Hale had said. “Cloud is not the savior for everything. There is always going to be the need for traditional hosting in a DOD data center. There are certain workloads that just do not fit well in a virtualized or cloud model."