JA25-078_AMD01 Thunder CAMP Redacted.pdf

JA25-078-Thunder CAMP Cloud CUI

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CUI

Government estimate by which did not account for the additional cloud support that would be needed to fully meet the requirements of this effort.

This action is to issue a firm-fixed-price TO against the JWCC Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract for Thunder CAMP Cloud. This TO will be issued directly to Microsoft Corporation. The anticipated period of performance is for a 1-year base period, plus one 1-year option period. The total estimated value is which will be funded by Defense Working Capital Funds.

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

The Thunder CAMP requirement is for access to a cloud service provider (CSP) that can provide multiple cloud services at the Impact Level (IL)5 and IL6 Secret/Collateral level to meet growing customer needs, for both software development and operations capabilities. This will allow Thunder CAMP to maintain the required operational security and flexibility to meet the weapon system development team’s needs across both classification levels and provide Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) platform products and services to multiple Department of Defense (DoD) weapons system program offices (SPOs).

4. SUPPORTING RATIONALE, INCLUDING A DEMONSTRATION THAT THE

PROPOSED CONTRACTOR’S UNIQUE QUALIFICATIONS OR THE NATURE OF THE

ACQUISITION REQUIRES USE OF AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Exception to Fair Opportunity.

FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B) - Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

(b) Description of the Justification.

The 76th SWEG requires Microsoft environment capabilities at unclassified (IL5), and Secret (IL6) levels. This specialized environment delivers enhanced security and regulatory compliance for customers tasked with solving engineering problems for weapons systems used for defending national security. Microsoft’s Secret cloud service offering is uniquely qualified to support the critical mission of 76th SWEG Thunder CAMP. Current platforms supported by the 76th SWEG only utilize Microsoft.

Transferring Thunder CAMP and its associated customers from the Microsoft platform would incur substantial and irrecoverable costs to the Government, estimated at (roughly 30M/monthly), due to the nature of the purchased software licenses and the deep integration within the Microsoft architecture. Furthermore, such a migration would necessitate a complete platform re-engineering and migration plan, projected to be approximately twelve months. Consequently, project delivery schedules for the affected SPOs would experience significant slippage, potentially jeopardizing the fulfillment of mission-critical requirements for over 14 different weapon systems with over 2,000

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Microsoft’s Secret cloud facilitates secure handling of classified data, a necessity in maintaining national security. Given Microsoft's scalability and flexibility, these offerings empower the 76th SWEG Thunder CAMP to rapidly adapt and respond to evolving threats, heightening operational efficiency and mission readiness. With Microsoft’s robust security and compliance mechanisms, 76th SWEG Thunder CAMP can focus on its primary mission with confidence in the utmost protection of sensitive defense data. Microsoft’s cloud services, including Entra ID, networking, Azure Kubernetes service, Azure Firewall, Azure Monitor, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Virtual Machines are the only capable technologies that will meet 76th SWEG Thunder CAMP’s requirements. This integration ensures that Thunder CAMP can leverage Microsoft’s cloud services while maintaining high security and compliance standards.

Microsoft’s expanded array of Zero Trust capabilities powered by a unified identity platform and pre-integrated, fit-for-purpose security tools; offer repeatable, comprehensive coverage across the seven pillars of the DoD Zero Trust Strategy for target and advanced activities.

Migration to any of the other three CSPs will result in an immediate work-stoppage of around 100 Government employees in Thunder CAMP and cause an interruption of the 76th SWEG’s environments that are utilized by more than 2,000 software developers across more than 14 weapon systems. This would result in additional work stoppages across the DoD. The potential impact of losing the 76th SWEG’s cloud capability would be no less than per day of down service, resulting in a loss of over alone if an update of services could not be established in the first month.

(c) Justification.

(1) Minimum Government requirements.

• Entra P2 Licenses (Required for conditional access policies and privilege management.)

• Entra ID

• Bastion

• Distributed denial of service Protection Plan

• Domain Name System(DNS) and Private DNS Zones

• Firewall and Firewall manager

• Monitor

• Keyvault

• Log Analytics

• Defender for Cloud

• Nat Gateway

• Sentinel

• Storage (Storage Account, Virtual Machine Disks)

• Recovery

• Virtual Machines

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• Virtual Network

• Public Internet Protocol Address

• Private Endpoints

• Application Load Balancer

• Kubernetes Service

• Container Registry

• Disk Encryption Set

• Managed Identity

• Remote Desktop Services (Host Pool, Workspace, Application Group)

• Data Collection endpoint and Data collection Rule

• Policy

• Network Watcher

(2) Proposed sole source contractor. Microsoft Corporation.

(3) Discussion regarding the cause of the sole source situation.

The only source capable of providing the foundational capabilities for the current customer base is Microsoft. Microsoft has developed a specialized delivery platform environment for software based on Microsoft cloud offerings and products. This new environment must replicate their development environments of the 76th SWEG customers so that they can build, test, and deploy code in the cloud environment while pulling this code to their own internal software and install on their weapons systems. The current customer environments are multiple weapon SPOs across the Air Force, Navy, Army, and Space Force. Migrating to another CSP would prevent the 76th SWEG from supporting Government mission owners and increase risk to an unacceptable level. If the software were changed by going to another CSP, all customers would be required to convert to comparable software that will integrate with the new software tools on another CSP’s cloud environment. To alleviate this burden, Thunder CAMP utilizes a standardized environment with established tools that are compatible with customer software, driving the Government’s current need for compatibility and seamless integration with its existing architecture.

(4) Demonstration of unique source.

Microsoft is the only CSP that can perform this requirement. The current customer base that is supported by the environment has developed their delivery platform around software that is compatible with the current environment. Microsoft has unique features for their cloud service offerings that are necessary to fulfill this requirement, such as Entra ID, networking, Azure Kubernetes service, Azure Firewall, Azure Monitor, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Virtual Machines. Based on previous discussions with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Public Sector, and Oracle America, Inc, no other CSP is offers these features on their capability roadmaps and/or they were unwilling/unable to provide required capabilities without a break in service. This new environment needs to mimic their development environment. Thunder CAMP designed its environment to accommodate customer decisions, recognizing that migrating to

Page 5 of 8 Pages another CSP would impact its ability to support its customer base. In addition, there would be the time to retrofit development practices to align to the new environment; this would not meet the Government’s minimum need.

(5) Procurement discussion.

Based on the Additional Research request to the four JWCC CSPs on April 9, 2025, the only CSP that is currently capable of meeting the minimum needs of the Government due to schedule, compatibility constraints, and mandatory requirements is Microsoft.

Schedule Constraints:

The Government is supporting new weapon system development across multiple weapon SPOs. These new weapon systems must be fielded on schedule in alignment with high-level national defense strategies. There cannot be a lapse in service due to the critical mission. The 76th SWEG must meet the demand signal from these various weapon SPOs to provide software development and operational capabilities. Due to this critical mission, Microsoft is the only CSP that can meet the Government requirement and provide the unique capabilities necessary to meet these schedules.

Compatibility Constraints:

The cloud environment’s capabilities must be compatible with current environments that have all been built on Microsoft technologies. Currently, SPOs in need of these capabilities cannot afford the time or schedule to build or refactor the required capabilities in a compatible environment, even if another CSP were to be capable.

Mandatory Requirements:

Future capabilities must align with the current environment’s capabilities which have been built on Microsoft’s environment and are required to meet the Government’s minimum needs.

(6) Impact.

Refactoring current technologies would take up to a year or more at an estimated (roughly monthly). Estimated impact would be greater than one year, as it would require contract modifications with prime contractors, migration plans, new hardware purchases for select customers, new software license purchases to be compatible with the new operating system, and the time to retrofit development practices to suit the new environment and get it approved through the Authorizing Official. If software development capabilities cannot be provided in the time needed, major weapon system development would be delayed and place unnecessary risk to national security as well as result in mission failure.

5. COST/PRICE FAIR AND REASONABLE DETERMINATION:

A determination that the price is fair and reasonable will be based on a comparison of the contractor’s proposal to the Independent Government Cost Estimate and the JWCC Catalog

Page 6 of 8 Pages pricing, including any discounts, which was previously found to be fair and reasonable and based on the contractor’s commercial pricing.

6. MARKET RESEARCH:

Market research for the basic JWCC Contracts was conducted and resulted in a signed market research report on November 9, 2021, that was revalidated and recertified on July 29, 2024.

After a survey of the market, it was concluded that the JWCC Contract is in the Government’s best interest due to technical feasibility and cost to the Government.

Additional research was conducted December 20, 2024 by reviewing the specific capabilities in the JWCC Contracts and it was determined that Microsoft Corporation is the only source capable of fulfilling the Government’s minimum needs in the manner and time frame required. Review of other CSPs via internet research resulted in a lack of compatibility with the required current and future capabilities. Moreover, the 76th SWEG issued the Additional Research to support an Exception to Fair Opportunity and reviewed published cloud offerings from each JWCC CSP.

The four JWCC CSPs were sent the Additional Research to Support an Exception to Fair Opportunity document on April 9, 2025, with responses due by April 15, 2025. Two of the four CSPs provided a response, AWS and Microsoft. Google Public Sector and Oracle America, Inc.

did not respond.

Microsoft provided a response which included a full overview of services and how Microsoft could meet the requirements. Microsoft provided a Crosswalk of Azure Services which presented a matrix of services available via their GovCloud offering as well as a detailed response to each of the specific capabilities Thunder CAMP submitted in the Additional Research request.

AWS’s response to the Additional Research to Support Exception to Fair Opportunity stated they can provide cloud platforms at the required levels and provided a list of equivalent software options and equivalents to Microsoft’s software requirements in Appendix A of their response.

Previous attempts to develop capabilities using AWS were unsuccessful. The 76th SWEG office spent approximately 2 years and to develop capabilities and were unsuccessful because of issues with the underlying platform due to lack of parity between the different classification levels; lack of service offerings such that required capabilities would need to be developed by a Government team and/or other contractor, causing additional time, cost, and risk. Oracle America Inc. and Google Public Sector did not respond to the Additional research request due to the need for Microsoft specific services.

7. ANY OTHER SUPPORTING FACTS: None.

8. ACTIONS THE AGENCY MAY TAKE TO REMOVE OR OVERCOME BARRIERS

THAT LED TO THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Procurement History: Not Applicable

(b) The Government will seek to develop technologies that are cloud agnostic. The 76th

SWEG office has been refactoring key technologies to be cloud agnostic to ease the time

Page 7 of 8 Pages and cost of deploying capabilities on other cloud platforms. To overcome future barriers to competition, future development and enhancement of IaaS components will include shifting to non-platform specific technologies. This will enable multiple CSPs to meet the requirements which will enable the flexibility to shift workload based on financial and mission requirements. The Government will continue to conduct market research to determine if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future competitive actions.