The U.S. Army is moving to break Broadcom’s grip on its enterprise virtualization infrastructure.
A new Call for Solutions issued by Army Contracting Command-Rock Island seeks to qualify multiple vendors for the Enterprise Virtualization Rapid Integration Solution, or EVRIS. The solicitation is a direct response to Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and subsequent changes to the company’s software licensing model.
The Army has spent roughly $686 million on VMware licensing since fiscal year 2019, according to federal procurement data. The service lost its ability to compete the buy in fiscal 2025, awarding Carahsoft Technology Corp. a sole-source enterprise license agreement.
That agreement’s second ordering period is funded through January 2027. EVRIS is designed to stand up a pool of alternative vendors before the Army faces a decision on a third ordering period.
Offers are due Aug. 10 at noon EDT. The tight 14-day turnaround and a requirement that bidders be original equipment manufacturers — explicitly excluding resellers and distributors — severely limits the competitive field.
The solicitation covers more than 750,000 endpoints across five tiers. Requirements span lightweight client-side virtualization for laptops, 256-core tactical edge nodes, regional data centers, global hyperscale control planes and secure virtual desktop infrastructure.
The Army is demanding modular licensing, tamper-resistant metering to prevent punitive compliance audits and the ability to transfer licenses across tiers without financial penalty. Vendors must also guarantee shelfware rates remain below 5% and provide automated tools to translate virtual machine formats directly from the incumbent platform.
Awards will be decentralized indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts under the Defense Commercial Solutions Opening authority. The enterprise contracts are unfunded vehicles. Revenue will depend on winning individual orders funded by decentralized Army customers using operations and maintenance or procurement dollars.
The initiative aligns with a Defense Department directive on information technology category management issued in July 2026. The policy mandates components use enterprise capabilities and software agreements to maximize buying power and reduce duplication.
Acting Army Chief Information Officer Gabe Chiulli is the primary architect of the effort. Chiulli previously articulated the service’s shift toward “just-in-time” consumption and away from bulk software buys as chief technology officer of the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency.
Red Hat, Nutanix, Microsoft and Scale Computing are among the likely competitors. Any vendor holding an existing Army enterprise agreement must apply lower EVRIS pricing retroactively to its current contract.
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