Notice ID 12314423Q0143
Related Notice 12314423R0011
A centerpiece of USDA’s strategy to address the stated challenges of the current environment is the establishment of STRATUS as its own cloud acquisition vehicle that best fits its IT governance model, the emerging cloud operating models, and the vision for a true USDA Digital Enterprise. The STRATUS key objectives are: § Full visibility, across customers, into inventory of services and the consumption data with access to deep data analytics.
Lower cost through aggregating demand and higher competition resulting in both innovative pricing models and lower unit prices. § Improved cost accountability and reporting, especially on labor services. § Ordering and billing transparency, streamlining and automation implemented uniformly across all acquisitions under this vehicle. § Flexibility to allow different cloud operating models. § Future‐proofing this vehicle to align with USDA strategic goals. § Drive toward a holistic, secure enterprise enabling agile delivery of capabilities through DevSecOps and GitOps best practices. § Optimization of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS utilizations across USDA. § Enabling rapid growth and migration of the remaining on‐premises workloads to cloud. § Robust development of shared services including data sharing throughout the Enterprise Cloud Vendor Management (ECVM) program. § Increased DISC capabilities for other federal agency customers. § Unified USDANet network access and implementing future architectures (e.g., Zero Trust).
STRATUS is divided into three pools of services. Pool 1 is for all the products that the hyperscale Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) may offer including their professional or technical support services as well as their marketplace products. It should be noted that STRATUS does not prescribe definitions or categories for IaaS, PaaS or SaaS under Pool 1 and simply refers to this pool as CSP Services. Pool 2 is for all cloud‐related labor and managed services including development, integration, management, and operational support. Pool 3 is for SaaS offerings (not including native hyperscale CSP services under Pool 1) including professional and technical support services provided by the SaaS Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). There are several reasons for this division. The intention is for hyperscale CSP services to fit into one pool (Pool 1) and have no need for hyperscale CSPs to bid under different pools. The divisions of Pools 2 and 3 are driven by the desire to have clear separation and cost accountability of software licenses (Pool 3) and reseller or systems integrator labor services (Pool 2). There may be exceptions to this division. For example, in cases where the Pool 2 reseller/integrator would offer capabilities they might have uniquely built on top of platforms or software that otherwise is under Pool 1 or 3. USDA may define at the Task Order level if they seek managed services or if they only want labor services under Pool 2 and that they will purchase IaaS/PaaS/SaaS under their respective pools and furnish them to the Pool 2 provider
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