USDA faces nine protests over Stratus cloud on-ramp process

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hit a snag in its march toward adding more companies to its Stratus cloud contract.

As part of the process to on-ramp more companies to pool two of the basic ordering agreement, USDA has gone through a down select process, eliminating several companies from the competition. And as you can imagine, some of them aren’t very happy about it.

So far, nine companies have filed protests at the Government Accountability Office challenging their elimination from the competition.

Stratus pool 2 covers integration and development services, including managed services. Examples of services USDA is looking to acquire include governance, cloud strategy, platform architecture, change management, training, operations and maintenance, and security.

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USDA first made awards to 37 companies under Stratus in spring 2024. In June it opened the competition to add more companies to pool two.

In addition to pool 2, Stratus has pool 1 for large-scale cloud providers. Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft hold those spots.

Pool 3 is for resellers and other providers of software-as-a-service products. USDA picked 12 companies for pool 3.

Stratus has no ceiling value, but the size and scope suggest it is a sizable opportunity.

Pool 2 protests were filed between Sept. 15 and 16. GAO will make a ruling between Dec. 24 and 26.

The nine protesters are:

• NikSoft Systems
• Red Tail Digital
• NTSMoserIT
• Ad Hoc LLC
• TechSur Guidehouse JV
• Sierra7 Inc.
• A-Tek Inc.
• Synergy Business Innovation and Solutions
• Changeis Inc.