The Defense Information Services Agency (DISA) is set to release new contracts for classified and unclassified mobility services to accommodate the growth in the area, said Jacob Marcellus, mobility program portfolio manager, during DISA’s 2018 Forecast to Industry event.
“We actually have two impending acquisitions, MES-U [Mobility Enterprise Services Unclassified], which will cover all unclassified mobility, and MES-C [Mobility Enterprise Services Classified], which will cover the classified mobility programs,” said Marcellus.
“MES-U – so we are on schedule to release our RFP on FedBizOpps next quarter,” said Marcellus, referring to Q1 of FY19. “MES-C … a couple of weeks ago we issued a draft RFP, and it is our intent in the next couple of weeks to release the final RFP.”
“MES-U will serve to re-compete and unify all of DISA’s unclassified mobile enterprise services,” said Marcellus. He noted that the program would be available to defense agencies outside of DISA, and that the new contract would replace the existing DoD Mobility Unclassified Capability program.
“What’s the difference on the managed service provider contracts? Today, my team does a lot of the detailed work and working with 16 different vendors. With this new contract, once it’s awarded, we will expect that the awardee does those things for us, so that my government team can work on things more like requirements and the enhancements,” said Marcellus.
On MES-C, Marcellus highlighted the change of unifying support for both secret and top secret classified mobility programs. He also pointed to the classified area as a strong barometer of mobility’s growth.
“When I started in mobility two and a half years ago, we only had about a third of the customers we have today … and at that time, there were only a dozen CSFCs, Commercial Solutions for Classified trusted integrators,” said Marcellus. “Now, there are 58 trusted integrators, with a whole slew of new, innovative solutions that can be used for increased capability and increased security.”