On Wednesday, the Defense Department announced that four businesses had received lucrative contracts for cloud computing: Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google According to a press release issued by the Pentagon, the contracts could be worth as much as $9 billion and run through 2028.
The project is for a brand-new cloud architecture known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. This architecture would offer cloud services to the Defense Department “across all security domains and classification levels.”
Three years after awarding Microsoft a $10 billion cloud computing contract, the Pentagon made a change by awarding contracts to four companies. The claims that President Donald J. Trump tampered with a procedure that favored Microsoft over Amazon, a rival bidder, led to the contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, becoming part of a legal dispute.
Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in an email, “This is the biggest cloud Beltway deal in history and was a key deal to win for all the software vendors in this multiyear soap opera.” After years of ups and downs, it’s good to finally finish this chapter and complete a cloud deal for the Pentagon.
Oracle, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to inquiries for clarification.
The Defense Department said in 2021 that it would not go ahead with the Microsoft contract because it “was developed at a time when the department’s needs were different and our cloud conversancy was less mature.” As a result, the department would not proceed with it.
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, the Pentagon stated, would instead be awarded to a number of technology firms through competitive bidding. Officials said they would also contact IBM, Oracle, and Google, despite the fact that research on the market indicated that Microsoft and Amazon would be in the best position to satisfy the requirements.
A larger number of technology companies benefited greatly from Wednesday’s announcement regarding the most important government contract. The largest of them had pushed hard for the previous JEDI contract, which was seen as a way to make the military’s cloud computing systems better and more up-to-date. Oracle was one of the businesses that lobbied the Pentagon to award multiple firms contracts for cloud computing and other government services.
