The award of the JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft is just one step forward in the Department of Defense’s cloud efforts. However, the current cloud contracts may not be seeing the right use. Larry Allen, Managing Director at BDO USA, says that acquiring more cloud services on top won’t make things better.
“We are seeing a lot of DoD acquisition of cloud solutions and seeing pretty uneven implementation of those solutions… The government is buying a lot of cloud. The DoD was buying about 500 million dollars a year up until the JEDI award, now it is going to be more than that. But they don’t always have a lot to show for it. That’s a concern,” Allen said. “In the last four years we have had three DoD CIOs and one acting CIO. We have had a lot of change at the top. Look at the Army, we’ve seen some changes in the Army CIO as well. You get that in the senior leadership, it’s going to slow things down.”