News Report
As reported in a recent press release, AMERICAN SYSTEMS announced the award of the Cloud Computing and IT Support Services contract by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). The award was made under the ENCORE II Multiple Award Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, which provides the US Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies with a full range of IT solutions.
The task order is valued at $18.3 million with a one-year base period and four one-year options.
AMERICAN SYSTEMS will provide security engineering certification and accreditation (C&A), managed hosting services, operations support to Security Cooperation Enterprise Solution (SCES), and managed IT Services.
Under the terms of the contract, AMERICAN SYSTEMS will provide 24/7/365 fully managed IT infrastructure hosting using cloud technology for SCES program support, non-production, disaster recovery, and production environments, as well as additional items of supply as they are reported in the above mentioned press release.
The Technology
Cloud computing, which refers to an emerging computing model where machines in large data centers can be used to deliver services in a scalable manner, has become popular for corporations in need of inexpensive, large scale computing. With cloud computing the key enterprise services are delivered over the Internet, on demand, from a remote location, rather than residing on the organization’s servers.
Recently, the United States government has begun to utilize cloud computing architectures, platforms, and applications to deliver services and meet the needs of their constituents.
The Context
More than a decade ago, US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) and the security community began efforts to upgrade US legacy case development, implementation and execution business systems. The goal was to replace the outdated systems used by Army, Navy, and Air Force security cooperation organizations. It was a significant effort that turned out to be more difficult than anyone anticipated.
In July 2008, the DSCA and the US Business Transformation Agency (BTA) partnered with each other to define, design, develop, field and implement a Security Cooperation Enterprise Solution (SCES).
The mission of SCES is to improve access and visibility of case execution data across acquisition, logistics, and financial functional areas to better manage security cooperation programs. SCES will achieve this mission by standardizing business processes, rules, and data, applying technologies that are flexible to support a changing business environment, and accessing the case execution data currently residing in the domestic systems (e.g., acquisition data) and leveraging the US DoD emerging Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
SCES focuses on Case Execution, Case Implementation until Case Reconciliation and Closure, specifically the logistics, acquisition and financial business processes and data that support Foreign Military Sales (FMS). SCES will encompass an end-to-end view of the security cooperation processes, data requirements, reporting requirements, and systems that currently support or will support the business of FMS. The resulting enterprise solution will focus on addressing the deficiencies and improving Case Execution by establishing the business standards and data necessary to support the end-to-end security cooperation process.
Comments
“We are thrilled to be selected based on our extensive experience across a broad range of IT services that provide the federal government with IT security, flexibility and availability,” said William C. Hoover, president and CEO of AMERICAN SYSTEMS. “AMERICAN SYSTEMS’ support will significantly contribute to the federal government’s efforts to move to the cloud for cost savings, flexibility, and secure performance.”
Additional Information
- Moving to the Cloud: An Introduction to Cloud Computing in Government (pdf)
References: American Systems (1), FBO.gov (2), DSCA's Director Blog (3)
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