Sharon Woods, director of the hosting and compute center at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said systems integrators will continue to play a key role in DISA’s hosting and computing journey, particularly in cloud adoption efforts, because of their experience and technical capabilities, Federal News Network reported Monday.
“We have limited resources within the department, and we are working very hard to continue to help our workforce acquire new skills, but the system integrators bring a level of talent and capability to the table that we can never replicate,” Woods said.
She noted that these integrators will form partnerships with cloud service providers rather than be at the forefront of the cloud deployment initiative.
“This is where I think there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But I think that system integrators play a critical, critical role in making sure that we’re able to implement and adopt hosting and compute on the kind of scale that is necessary for the department,” she noted.
Woods’ remarks come after some industry stakeholders raised concerns over a statement in DISA’s strategic plan regarding the possible elimination of integrators and third party resellers as the agency works to create a multivendor procurement vehicle for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program to directly acquire services from commercial cloud vendors.
