The Pentagon and General Services Administration have officially re-awarded the multi-billion dollar Defense Office Enterprise Solutions (DEOS) cloud computing contract to the team led by CSRA, now part of General Dynamics [GD] IT (GDIT), the agencies said Friday.

The new 10-year, $4.4 billion contract to the GDIT team, which includes Dell [DELL] Marketing L.P. and Minburn Technology Group LLC, arrives over a year after they received the initial deal, which was then subject to a series of protests by Perspecta [PRSP].

Aerial of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington D.C., with I-395 freeway on the left, and the Air Force Memorial up middle.

“GSA and DoD have made every effort to ensure this process is fair, transparent, and equitable. As part of a due process for interested parties, the original DEOS award in August 2019 was initially protested with various supplemental protests being filed with the Government Accountability Office. GSA elected to take corrective action, amended the solicitation, received and evaluated new quotes, and made an award to the vendor that was determined to provide the best value to the government,” the GSA wrote in a statement.

The GDIT team is tasked with building off Microsoft’s [MSFT] 0365 platform, as the Pentagon looks to build a more effective cloud tool for its email, file sharing and storing applications.

“With the award of DEOS, the Department will be able to transfer a significant part of the ongoing technical and management load to the integrator and free up strained resources to execute other priority missions,” DoD CIO Dana Deasy said in a statement. 

The original DEOS contract was awarded in August 2019 to the GDIT team with a 10-year blanket purchase agreement valued at $7.6 billion (Defense Daily, Aug. 29 2019). 

Perspecta, which led the team that had the losing bid, then filed its protest in September 2019 (Defense Daily, Sept. 11 2019). 

GSA did not specify why the new contract is now valued at $4.4 billion, or if the change was due to adjustments as a result of Perspecta’s protest. 

The new blanket purchase agreement for DEOS includes a five-year base period, with two two-year options and one one-year option.