# Mechanical Orchard delegated ‘Awardable’ for Department of Defense contracts on Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace **July 9, 2025** **San Francisco, CA** - Mainframe modernization company [Mechanical Orchard](/content/site-root.html) today announced it has achieved “Awardable” status through the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s (CDAO) [Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace](https://tradewindmarketplace.com/). The Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace is the premier offering of Tradewinds, the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) suite of tools and services designed to accelerate the procurement and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), data, and analytics capabilities. “It’s great to have the recognition that our technology meets the high standards required to provide services to the Department of Defense,” said Mark Forsthoffer, VP of Federal, Mechanical Orchard. “80% of the $100 bn federal departments' IT spend goes towards maintaining outdated IT. It’s not surprising - modernization is a tough and historically risky problem to solve.” Mechanical Orchard was recognized by the Tradewinds Assessment Panel for its ‘ _novel architectural approach_’. The Company’s end-to-end mainframe modernization platform, Imogen, uses data flows to safely and incrementally rebuild critical systems. Instead of focusing only on code, the system captures how individual workloads actually behave and rewrites that behavior into modern, idiomatic code. By creating a rapid loop of code generation and validation against real data flows as each workload is rewritten, Imogen removes the long, often uncertain phase that slows down current modernization methods. The Company was recognized among a competitive field of applicants to the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace whose solutions demonstrated innovation, scalability, and potential impact on DoD missions. Mark continued, “We’ve been designated awardable because we make modernization safe and fast, without disrupting day-to-day operations. We bring a new approach to a community fed up with thinking about system crashes, resourcing headaches, and the disappointment of failed modernization projects. Our ambition is to free up the DoD to focus on continuous innovation—essential for adaptability in an increasingly uncertain world.” Mechanical Orchard’s video, found [here](https://cdao.appiancloud.us/suite/sites/tsm-marketplace-portal/page/tsm-marketplace-portal/record/lUBHZiMy1aRWfjCLrPMB2tlYAIndwC-PEG_POB-JBeM3S5M81ZNZcoZdN1Mdglj-3XfZ_xPqB2yw6QbyXGZKvWKQk8C8iNLSz8uhvMDSmv4z3SI2rmB/view/summary), is accessible only by government customers on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace. Government customers interested in viewing the video solution can create a Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace account at [tradewindAI.com](http://tradewindai.com/). ### Footnote **About Mechanical Orchard** Mechanical Orchard develops, licenses, and implements software that changes the way organizations modernize the world’s most critical and complex legacy systems. Founded in October 2022, clients include global retailers, public sector, logistics and consumer packaged goods companies, and investors include GV, Emergence Capital, Fin Capital and MongoDB. Mechanical Orchard is based in San Francisco, CA. Visit [www.mechanicalorchard.com](/content/site-root.html) for more information. **‍** **About Tradewinds Solution Marketplace** About the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace: The Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace is a digital repository of post-competition, readily awardable pitch videos that address the Department of Defense’s (DoD) most significant challenges in the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), data, and analytics space. All awardable solutions have been assessed through complex scoring rubrics and competitive procedures and are available to Government customers with a Marketplace account. Government customers can create an account at www.tradewindai.com. Tradewinds is housed in the DoD’s Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office. For more information or media requests, contact: [Success@tradewindai.com](mailto:success@tradewindai.com).