CBP expands on cloud migration plan in new RFI
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is looking to develop a flexible contract vehicle in support of its migration of IT services to the cloud.
CBP issued a new request for information Wednesday in search of potential vendors to lead its ongoing move to the cloud and to integrate that with its existing cloud services.
“CBP requires an authorized public-sector reseller to provide access to current and future compute levels across Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and any additional ‘as a service’ offerings,” the RFI says. The plan places emphasis on a solution that provides technical parity, interoperability and portability, “operational excellence,” pricing parity, “superior contract management,” security, and bring-your-own-license capability.
The provider would need to be the orchestrator of CBP‘s multiple ongoing and future cloud efforts, giving CBP secure “single-hop connectivity” between cloud vendors, the solicitation says. The contractor would also provide professional support and consulting services.
CBP’s current cloud environment includes most of the major providers, including IBM, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Google, Salesforce, ServiceNow and others.
The agency recently issued its strategy for 2020-2025, which included a goal for investing in technology to confront emerging threats. The RFI says this large-scale move to the cloud supports that need.
“The objective is to acquire cloud-computing services directly from commercial cloud service providers with established records for innovation and operational excellence in cloud service delivery for a large customer base,” the RFI says. “This will enable the CBP to modernize and innovate the way software and data are built, deployed and managed within CBP’s current capability and as future offerings become available. CBP needs to enable quick, reliable, secure, and consistent delivery of modernized digital solutions.”
The hope is, says the RFI, that CBP will “establish a flexible contracting vehicle(s) that provides the integration of multiple public-sector resellers, keeps pace with the complexities of cloud migrations and new technology offerings, and delivers optimal pricing to meet CBP’s mission needs.”
If CBP does move forward with the procurement, it doesn’t anticipate making an award until the second quarter of 2020. Last year, CBP issued a similar RFI in anticipation of the end of its lease at the National Data Center in September 2019.
