DISA, Carahsoft enter $970M VMware cloud software pact

The Defense Information Systems Agency and Carahsoft have entered into a new five-year, $970 million blanket purchase agreement that brings together several contracts for Broadcom software into one pact.

Carahsoft is an authorized distributor of Broadcom products including the VMware brand name, of which the VMware Cloud Foundation platform is the primary focus for this BPA.

DISA and Carahsoft said Tuesday they set up the BPA to establish a single point of entry for multiple Defense Department agencies to acquire the VCF platform for private cloud infrastructure, tactical edge operations, Zero Trust security and application development services.

VCF is designed to act as a private environment that incorporates the public cloud’s agility and scalability with the security, performance, controls and total cost of ownership that comes with on-premise environments.

Under this new pact, DOD agencies also have access to professional services and technical training to support the deployment of VMware technologies.

The BPA also is intended to prioritize the development and maintenance of Security Technical Implementation Guides, or STIGs, to standardize how the technologies are implemented across federal environments. STIGs are essentially meant to act as a blueprint for simplifying VCF implementations and deployments.

Broadcom and VMware products are typically sold to federal agencies through resellers like Carahsoft, given that Broadcom does not hold its own Schedule contract with the General Services Administration.

In January, Broadcom entered into a OneGov agreement with GSA that covers discounted access to the company’s software products including VMware. OneGov is GSA’s strategy for working more directly with commercial software providers and obtaining volume discounts.