DISA to award $450M for commercial cloud services

The Defense Information Systems Agency posted a presolicitation for proposals on June 24 calling for commercial cloud services with a potential value of $450 million. The award is for commercial infrastructure as a service and will include cloud-based storage, virtual machine, database and web-hosting support.

In 2011 DISA aimed to provide private cloud-computing services across the Defense Department, but Congress instead directed DOD CIO Teri Takai to solicit from the commercial sector. Many commercial companies can offer these services at lower price points, a benefit to the budget-conscious department.

Following the decision of Navy and Marine Corps in April, DISA is expected to initially limit use of the cloud to non-sensitive and administrative data. The formal request for proposals is expected on or around August 26.