The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) Procurement program is receiving praise from cloud service providers as it enters its third year.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status Weekly Podcast Rand Waldron, vice president of product development at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said that the current structure of the JWCC promotes competition between the most powerful cloud service providers, allowing the most useful and efficient to rise to the top.

“We are all working to offer more services across the airgap rather than just half our services. We are all competing to offer more cost-effectiveness, higher performance, more regions closer to the mission.” he said on the podcast. “You bring that competition into this space and it empowers the mission to find the cloud that fits them best.”

The JWCC is a U.S. government defense contract program that gives the Pentagon the ability to acquire cloud services directly from service providers. The contract, which originated in 2022, has a cost ceiling of $9 billion and incorporates cloud services from top players in the industry such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. 

Mr. Waldron says that by integrating cloud services, the federal government is getting access to significant innovations.

The cloud “is an innovation pipeline,” he said. “So you’re not just leasing a server, you’re essentially subscribing to the cloud service providers’ innovation pipeline, where every single week, every single month, the cloud service provider is coming out with new capabilities, new features, new services, better GPUs or better AI services.”

Mr. Waldron said the structure of the JWCC also gives the federal government more flexibility to make the best decision for its needs. 

“That gives the government the power,” he explained, “rather than being locked into a particular vendor or particular program that’s going to last decades and traps the government as much as it empowers the government. This absolutely gives the government the power to get the best out of all of us.”

Still, the system isn’t perfect. While the JWCC allows for contributions from various cloud service providers, the scale of the enterprise brings with it administrative challenges. 

“One of the biggest pitfalls is that it is not cost-free for the government to administer and work with multiple vendors,” Mr. Waldron said. “Each vendor needs some security accreditation, each vendor needs some cleared people. All of these become costs on the government, not so much in terms of dollars, but in terms of time and capacity to run these clearances through.”

• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.