A Preliminary Look at Federal Government Cloud Numbers for Fiscal 2016

About this time every year, Deltek GovWin’s Federal Market Analysis team is buried in data showing federal government spending and contract value trends for cybersecurity, cloud computing, big data, and mobility. FMA’s analysis focuses on the three previous fiscal years for our upcoming reports because those are the years for which we have complete data sets. With the end of FY 2016 approaching and the 90 day lag in reporting of defense contract spending data, FMA has only a partial view of the trends in the current fiscal year, so we typically avoid analysis of it until the end of the next FY.

The lack of complete data sets doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t discern some preliminary trends in technology buying by federal agencies. Take cloud computing, for example. While we may not have contract spending data, we do have some data that provides insight into what agencies are purchasing. This preliminary data represented in the chart below shows that as of September 2016, civilian agencies have awarded cloud contracts valued at nearly $75 million; a total $30 million higher than the defense sector of the market. 

Breaking down the sector data into specific agencies reveals the following.

Readers are probably surprised to see Air Force out in front; and even Army and Navy are represented here, although the DoD continues to slow roll its adoption of cloud. The Air Force total derives from the Installation Services Node/Installation Processing Node Pathfinder program awarded to Agile Defense (Contract #FA872616F0003) in March 2016. IPN Pathfinder is critical to Air Force’s move to the cloud because it will provide a single hosting environment for “Air Force Information Network (AFIN) Core Services and functional applications” from Air Force Major Commands, mission offices, and program offices.

The IPN Pathfinder program is basically Air Force’s version of DISA’s MilCloud 2.0 and the Army’s on-premise contractor-owned cloud at Redstone Arsenal. The DoD as a whole is moving toward a hybrid cloud environment that employs a mix of commercial clouds, on-premise government owned/contractor operated (GOCO) clouds, and traditional data centers for mission critical applications. In Air Force’s case, the IPN Pathfinder will result in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) construct at five Air Force Global Strike Command bases, four Air Force Space Command bases, and one Air Force in Europe base.

As for the other ranked departments, here are the projects that comprise their awarded contract value (ACV) totals:

• DOJ – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Deployment, $28 million. Awardee – Dell.
• USDA – SAP HANA Cloud-Based Solutions for the USDA Financial System, $20 million. Awardee – Toyakoi Ventures; DSC Cloud Technology-Based Application Support, $146 thousand. Awardee – Creative Systems and Consulting; CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise SW Maintenance Renewal, $111 thousand. Awardee – DLT Solutions; AGLearn Oracle Service Cloud Renewal, $33 thousand. Awardee – ImmixGroup; and Web Enterprise Cloud Product Suite for the NWRC Library, $ 13 thousand. Awardee – SirsiDynix Corporation.
• DHS – Victim Information Notification Exchange, $14.5 million. Awardee – Project Performance Company.
• Army – Global Enterprise Fabric, $13 million. Awardee – Iron Brick Associates.
• Treasury – Email-as-a-Service Implementation, $11 million. Awardee – Unisys.
• Navy – Advanced Analytics and Data Science for Naval Warfare Planning and Execution, $2.7 million. Awardee – Commonwealth Computer Research; CloudLock for Google Apps, $43 thousand. Awardee – CloudLock.
• Commerce – CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise Edition Subscription Software Licenses and Maintenance, $480 thousand. Awardee - ASET Partners; Video Streaming/Cloud-Based Video Platform Service for NIST G-Burg and Boulder Campuses, $382 thousand. Awardee – Tribalco; and MaaS360 Mobile Device Management Renewal, $70 thousand. Awardee – A&T Systems.
• HHS – HHS Cloud Sandbox Project, $539 thousand. Awardee – Green IT Systems Group.

This data only scratches the surface of what’s been purchased in FY 2016. FMA will gather the data for the rest of the fiscal year starting next quarter.