The Army is pursuing a multi-vendor approach for its re-compete effort to power its Vantage data platform, with an aim to award deals in late 2023.
Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo on Thursday detailed the latest with the Vantage re-compete, noting officials are currently working through a Request For Information and industry’s feedback on the draft requirements.
“The program is going to operate under the following principles. First, is continued progress on the data products to support our soldiers. We’re not paying to step back in any way on our push for unlocking our data. We’re going to pursue a multi-vendor approach that allows for testing with industry’s approaches and allows us to tailor products for specific use cases,” Camarillo said during remarks at AFCEA NOVA’s Army IT Day in McLean, Virginia.
Palantir Technologies [PLTR] is the current software provider for Vantage, with the Army awarding the company a deal worth up to $458 million in December 2019 to power the data platform.
“The Army Vantage platform was established to enable users to make data driven decisions, allowing the Army to leverage its data as a strategic asset. Palantir’s continued partnership with the Army since the platform’s launch has helped generate and integrate over 30,000 unique data sets from over 160 distinct systems,” Palantir said in a statement in December 2021 after the Army picked up its second option year on the contract valued at $116.3 million.
Camarillo told reporters following his remarks that the multi-vendor approach for Army Vantage will ensure “we can continue to make sure that we have the best that industry can possibly offer in terms of our approaches to visualizing and analyzing our data.”
The Army’s use cases for Vantage have included highlighting “unliquidated obligations in our audit efforts” to helping with logistics and supply chain issues, according to Camarillo.
“It’s a centrally-run program to be able to develop data products based on whatever their mission needs are,” Camarillo told reporters. “Part of the work involved in developing a data platform is working with the specific Army users to ingest unstructured data that’s in legacy systems into a new visualization platform and then developing it into a way that can work. That’s what Vantage does.”