These IT Programs Are Moving to the Cloud in FY 2020

Federal agencies plan to move 272 information technology programs to the cloud in fiscal 2020, and are considering migrating more than 1,000 more, according to new data published to the government’s IT portfolio dashboard.

This information can help contractors and federal technology leaders anticipate cloud-related opportunities and risks over the next 18 months and plan accordingly.

Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released new data to ITDashboard.gov that includes information on each program’s cloud status. In a field known as the Cloud Computing Alternatives Evaluation, agencies score their IT line items in terms of their applicability for current or future cloud migration. The scale is:

1. This investment or a portion of it is already leveraging cloud computing.
2. This investment will migrate, or is in the process of migrating, to the cloud.
3. This investment is considering cloud migration.
4. Cloud computing has not been considered for this investment.
5. Cloud computing is not applicable for any part of the investment.
6. Cloud computing was considered, but not selected.

Cloud alternatives data was previously available for mission delivery and administrative support programs, but was released only recently for IT infrastructure, IT management, and IT security programs, which account for about $32 billion of the $88 billion fiscal 2020 IT budget request.

The data indicates that 272 projects will begin or complete the process of migrating to a cloud environment during fiscal 2020, while another 1,145 are evaluating cloud computing as an option that could result in additional cloud spending in fiscal 2020 and beyond. Agencies plan to host 1,025 programs fully or partially in the cloud.

In 841 cases, agency leaders assessed the cloud suitability of the project and opted against it. However, these projects could be considered in the future if economic and mission factors change.

Cloud was deemed inapplicable for 2,586 projects – about 35 percent of the governmentwide IT portfolio – either for security reasons or because their legacy architectures would make a cloud migration impractical. Another 1,479 projects have yet to be evaluated.

Projects Moving to the Cloud in Fiscal 2020

Of the 272 IT projects migrating to the cloud in fiscal 2020, 129 of them are at the Department of Defense. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice will migrate another 44 and 16 projects to the cloud, respectively. These 272 projects involved a combined budget request of $3.8 billion in fiscal 2020, though cloud investment will represent only a fraction of that total.

In terms of total budget, the largest IT line items migrating to the cloud in fiscal 2020 are:

The three DHS programs listed above may represent essential elements of that agency’s Compute and Storage Modernization, Cloud Migration, and Data Center Optimization initiative which was launched in February 2019. DHS will close its Data Center 2, currently operated by Perspecta Inc., in favor of a multivendor, multicloud approach.

Projects Considering a Move to the Cloud

Of the 1,145 projects considered for a move to the cloud in fiscal 2020, 379 are from the Pentagon, 191 are from the Department of Health and Human Services, 80 are from the Department of Agriculture, and 76 are from DHS. Agencies have budgeted a combined $8.7 billion for these projects.

The largest IT programs considering cloud migration are:

Four of the 10 line items listed above are from the State Department, hinting at the possibility of a large-scale cloud migration in fiscal 2020 or 2021. This could put multiple contracts related to State’s Vanguard 2.2.1 IT infrastructure program at risk, including a $3.2 billion task order with Science Applications International Corp. that ends in August 2021 and a $337 million task order with Digital Management Inc. that expires in February 2021.

According to the IT Dashboard, federal agencies expect to invest a combined $1.6 billion in cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), $924 million in cloud software as a service (SaaS), and $9.9 billion in other managed services. The true figures are likely 15-20 percent higher, as $19 billion in national security-related IT projects are not reported to the dashboard.

Chris Cornillie is a federal market analyst with Bloomberg Government.

To contact the analyst on this story: Chris Cornillie in Washington at ccornillie@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Snyder at dsnyder@bgov.com; Jodie Morris at jmorris@bgov.com