I’ve done IDIQ contracts in state government. You can absolutely save money, but you need to force a limited list of SKUs and renegotiate pricing at different volume-based high water marks.

Winner take all is also important, because it eliminates the room for sales bullshit. The magic is figuring out how to break up the lots of services so that it makes sense. You don’t want to give any one of AWS, Google and Microsoft everything, so you want to design lots that keep it competitive. This also ensures that any one vendor doesn’t subsidize strategic SKUs by discounting something that isn’t meaningful.

Everything fed is more complex, but it’s all doable.