The General Services Administration's second attempt at a cloud computing  procurement effort went live May 13 with release of a new request for quotes, after the federal agency withdrew a previous soliciation in February.

The new RFQ, for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), is divided into three sections--virtual machines, cloud storage and web hosting services--and addresses some factors not present in the original soliciation:

• Apps.gov did not exist when the initial RFQ was released; when awarded, the new version of the contract will be more closely aligned with Apps.gov. GSA says IaaS will be available through Apps.gov in late 2010.
• The response to the initial RFQ was weak and GSA has ramped up outreach for the update.
• The new RFQ has higher level security requirements. "This will not only enable more widespread agency use of these services but allow for more security for government data to be hosted in this environment," said a GSA post on Info.apps.gov.
• According to the new RFQ, the awarded contract will comply with the recently established Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization Program.

On May 20, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra highlighted FedRAMP, stating that "what's important today is the [development of standards] in the area of security, interoperability and data portability," during a keynote address at the Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, according to NextGov

"With FedRAMP, we're centrally certifying solutions [as secure] so we can create cross-government platforms," he added. 

The RFQ (RFQ 460354 in GSA's eBuy system) closes on June 15. Questions can be sent to iaas@gsa.gov.

For more:
- see the RFQ (.pdf)
- read this NextGov article
- check out GSA's post about the update

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