“The General Services Administration wants to be the prime destination or federal agencies’ cloud solutions. Now it’s launching a new blanket purchase agreement specifically for cloud technology.
Ascend BPA is a multi-purpose, multiple award BPA to allow agencies to acquire and implement secure commercial cloud services offerings, and to deliver solutions that they need. Ascend will be designed to enable agencies to plan and execute cloud acquisitions, and it will have in-built minimum thresholds for security, data ownership, and common terms and conditions…”
“’The idea is to reduce the burden for all agencies and become, instead of [every] agency having to figure out the different nuances of how to do payment for spend, forecasting demand, best practices around security and privacy — all those things going to be baked in,’ [Sonny Hashmi, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service] said. ‘So hopefully it’s going to reduce the burden for agencies. And equally importantly, it’s going to lower administration costs for our providers.’…”
“Ascend BPA is still in the market research phase and an exact award date is uncertain, but GSA hopes to get much engagement from industry over the coming months with an upcoming industry day and a draft solicitation. GSA is still looking over the responses it received from an RFI conducted in the fall, Hashmi said…” Read the full article here.
Source: GSA’s new blanket purchase agreement focuses on scalable cloud solutions – By Amelia Brust, April 6, 2022. Federal News Network.
