The Army is searching for an industry partner to fulfill Enterprise Information Technology as a Service (EITaaS) needs and released a prototype project opportunity notice to that end July 9.
Final proposals are due Aug. 9. The Army expects to award up to three prototype contracts through other transaction agreements.
The idea of EITaaS follows the belief that commercial IT companies can increase effectiveness, increase IT user efficiencies, and establish standardized, innovative IT services. As a result, staff traditionally assigned to IT tasks can be freed up for more specific tasks.
The Air Force is also pursuing an EITaaS solution.
The Army’s notice comes after a three-month process that began with vendors self-qualifying against eight government-chosen capabilities that are necessary for a prime contractor, the notice said. This means competitors must be able to add a surge capacity of about 10,000 users in 45 days or less and an increased customer base of about 1.3 million users over four years. They must also be able to implement identity access management and integration with other cloud service providers, the FedBizOpps listing said.
The program’s leaders will pursue three lines of effort, the release said. They include:
- Network as a Service, which means the industry partner will supply networking services to the Army because this arrangement is more efficient than the Army building its own infrastructure;
- End-user services, which involves providing endpoint security and end user device management; and
- Compute and store, which includes managing data storage and access through cloud deployment methods, Lt. Col. Christine Youngquist, the project’s acquisition lead from Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, said in an email to C4ISRNET.
The industry partner or partners will work with Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, Army Cyber Command and the Army CIO/G6 to explore a new approach for delivering enterprise-level network and core IT services.
Cal Pringle is a general assignment editorial fellow supporting Defense News, C4ISRNET and Fifth Domain. He is attending the University of Richmond.
