Army Issues RFI For Cloud Transformation Project
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Last November, the Army introduced the Army Cloud computing Enterprise Transformation (ACCENT) in a draft request for proposal. ACCENT is designed to oversee the migration of enterprise-level systems and applications to the cloud by October 1, 2018. The ACCENT program is not new — the name was adopted with the issuance of the draft RFP but essentially succeeds the existing Army Cloud Hosting Contract Vehicle.
As part of this process, the Army is looking to utilize commercially operated legacy applications to replace legacy applications in government data centers, including active directory, public key infrastructure certificate validation/authentication, virtual load balancer and virtual private network, and others, according to documents accompanying the December 30, 2015 request for information (RFI) posted to Fed BizOpps.
As part of the transition process, the Army has issued a request for information asking companies to provide details regarding support services to help the Army transition legacy applications by the end of 2018.
While ACCENT is still in the early stages of development, a draft request for proposals issued in November presented a two-step acquisition process that includes a “basic ordering agreement (BOA)” phase to qualify cloud vendors with no guarantee of future work, followed by competition for individual projects at the task order level.
According to the draft request, the BOAs would be valid for three years, using a multistep procurement process.
Doug Haskin, project director for enterprise services within the Army’s program executive office for enterprise information systems told Federal News Radio that the BAOs would function in manner similar to the blanket purchase agreements commonly used by government agencies, “But we think the BOA is better for the high-dollar contract actions that are associated with hosting services. It also gives us more flexibility to adapt to uncertain requirements when you don’t know all the requirements up front, which is the position we’re in now.”
ACCENT is designed to provide flexibility in purchasing infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service cloud offerings, and vendors must meet FedRAMP standards for cloud security and have DoD-specific provisional authorizations to engage in business with the government. Any additional DoD security controls would be established on a task-order-by-task-order basis. ACCENT is being used by the Army to respond to guidance issued by its chief information officer in July, directing that migration of enterprise-level applications must be migrated to commercial environments by 2018.
"My understanding is that ACCENT contract holders will be the primary providers of commercial cloud services to the Army, and I have heard that ACCENT will be the go-to contract vehicle used by the Army Application Migration Business Office for migrating applications to commercial clouds," Col. John Rozsnyai, chief of the enterprise architecture division for the Army CIO. told the E-Commerce Times.
"In this sense, securing a spot on ACCENT is a must-win for vendors hoping to do cloud business with the Army. Award of the contract would definitely be a notable milestone for the Army and probably for the DoD as a whole because it will provide customers with a bevy of cleared vendors to choose from," Rozsnyai said.
A final request for proposals most likely would be issued between July and December, he estimated.