The Pentagon is in the process of developing a follow-on to the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract vehicle, which was awarded in 2022 to cloud-service providers Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. This new initiative, referred to as JWCC Next, will be a multi-award contract but is expected to operate at a larger scale than its predecessor. John Hale, product management and development chief at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), stated the intention behind this evolution.
Defense officials are currently finalizing the acquisition strategy for JWCC Next and are engaging with industry partners and stakeholders across the Department of Defense (DOD). They plan to publish a draft request for proposals later this year, with the goal of starting to accept bids in 2026. Hale indicated during the OpenText Government Summit on March 6 that he anticipates JWCC Next to be introduced in approximately 18 months.
As of now, JWCC has allocated $2.3 billion in task orders across the four cloud service providers, according to DISA, which manages the contract. These task orders pertain to a diverse array of mission-critical cloud requirements, some of which are classified, and serve various components of the DOD.
Hale highlighted that while JWCC has permitted Defense customers to leverage the capabilities of the four leading hyperscale cloud providers, JWCC Next intends to encompass entire cloud ecosystems and third-party marketplaces, including offerings from smaller vendors. He noted the desire among mission partners for comprehensive ecosystems built around hyperscaler providers, indicating they seek “the entire enchilada.”
Approximately 180 cloud providers meet the baseline cloud-security requirements for DOD usage, as stated by Hale, who also acknowledged the challenge of accessing these providers easily. He mentioned that his team is observing a growing demand for multi-cloud solutions among mission partners and is striving to develop new strategies to facilitate access to these additional providers.
One mission partner, the Army, is actively pursuing commercial cloud services and ecosystems that are comparable to those available in the private sector. Army Chief Technology Officer Gabe Chiulli shared insights during a panel conversation with Hale on March 6, expressing the need to quickly enable integrators to leverage these services effectively.
While the Defense Department has refrained from commenting on the specifics related to the size, scope, or timeline of JWCC Next, they stated they are applying lessons learned from the current JWCC contract.
According to Deltek, the federal government spent a record $16.5 billion on cloud computing in the past year, with the Defense Department being a significant contributor to this growth. Deltek forecasts federal cloud-computing expenditures to exceed $30 billion by fiscal year 2028.
JWCC is one of several multibillion-dollar cloud computing contracts existing within the Defense Department and intelligence community. Notably, in 2020, the CIA awarded its C2E cloud contract to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM for competitive IC task orders. Additionally, Amazon Web Services secured the NSA’s $10 billion cloud contract, known internally as WildandStormy.
Furthermore, JWCC represented a follow-up to the previously canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a controversial single-award attempt that was terminated after years of litigation.
