GDIT hangs on to DEOS cloud contract

The General Services Administration and U.S. Department of Defense re-awarded a contested cloud email and business software contract to the original winners, but with a lower value ceiling.

In an Oct. 30 statement, GSA and DOD said they had awarded the 10-year, $4.4 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) Blanket Purchase Agreement to General Dynamics IT and teaming partners Dell Marketing and Minburn Technology Group.

The contract covers the delivery, integration and support of Microsoft's cloud-based productivity suite Microsoft Office 365.

GSA and DOD had originally awarded DEOS to GDIT and teammates in August, 2019. That award was for a contract that had a $7.6 billion ceiling over 10 years.

That award was protested by Perspecta, the lead vendor on the team that missed out on DEOS. Ultimately, GSA and DOD reworked and re-competed the contracts.

It's not clear why the new award comes with a lower ceiling value. A GSA spokesperson declined to comment, citing the 10-day window for filing protests.

DEOS is a seminal cloud contract for the DOD. It sets enterprise-level, cloud-based productivity tools, such as word processing and spreadsheets, email, collaboration, file sharing and storage.

Under DEOS, Microsoft 365 will be deployed in unclassified and classified environments.

The contract is a key to the DOD's digital modernization efforts, said Dana Deasy, DOD CIO in an Oct. 30 statement.

The contract's "fit-for-purpose cloud offering will streamline our use of cloud email and collaborative tools while enhancing cybersecurity and information sharing based on standardized needs and market offerings," he said.

In the Oct. 30 statement, GSA and DOD noted the protest and said that the contracting team has "made every effort to ensure this process is fair, transparent, and equitable."

This article first appeared on FCW, a Defense systems partner site.