The General Services Administration (GSA) has released a supplemental special notice to go along with its request for information (RFI) on GSA’s intent to establish a multiple-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) known as the Ascend BPA for commercial cloud services.
GSA said it issued the supplemental special notice as a means to further engage and collaborate with industry and agencies to gather feedback on the Draft Performance Work Statement included in the RFI.
The agency is looking for additional feedback by 4 p.m. EST on June 6.
Anticipated award dates are yet to be determined, GSA said in the supplement.
Formerly known as the GSA Governmentwide Cloud BPA, the Ascend BPA will allow agencies to acquire and implement secure commercial cloud services. The goal is to reduce agency burden by having the different nuances of cloud solutions already baked in.
“There’s always going to be a way to buy straightforward, fixed-price cloud solutions, just the way agencies have today. But there’s a lot of, kind of pain points and use cases that are not being addressed, and that’s what we’re envisioning this marketplace to approach,” GSA Commissioner for Federal Acquisition Services Sonny Hashmi said during the initial RFI rollout.
GSA intends to award the Ascend BPA in a phased manner, and plan to make multiple awards in each pool, with each having a specific scope to allow Federal agencies and others to acquire and implement secure, integrated commercial cloud services solutions.
