Solomonic decision. The Pentagon will have four different providers for its cloud computing and storage systems for military uses. The Department of Defense has announced this wednesday which has awarded Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle contracts for a maximum amount of 9,000 million dollars (close to 8,600 million euros). The new award replaces the one initially awarded during Donald Trump’s tenure to Microsoft, which drew the ire of Amazon and was later rescinded.
The information provided by the Pentagon indicates that there is no amount of funds committed to any of the companies, but that they will be specified order by request. Its distribution will depend on each specific order and the fact that each company has been assigned the same limit of 9,000 million does not imply that the federal government is going to spend 36,000 million, since it is a multiple award contract, in which each company will end up receiving orders for an indefinite amount.
“The objective of this contract is to provide the Department of Defense with cloud services for the entire organization and available on a global scale in all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic to the tactical level,” explains the Pentagon in its release. The contract has been dubbed the Joint Combat Cloud Capability (JWCC).
The multi-billion dollar contract for the use of remote servers to store and process US defense information was first awarded in October 2019, then for $10 billion. The favorite at that time was Amazon, the clear leader in cloud computing, but the winner ended up being Microsoft after the then president, Donald Trump, became personally involved in the contest. Trump was in conflict with the founder and main shareholder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the washington post, that he maintained a critical line with the president.
Amazon announced in November 2019 that it had launched the process to challenge the award of the contract, then called the Joint Defense Infrastructure Enterprise (JEDI). Oracle also appealed the award.
contract canceled
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The Defense Department canceled the contract in July 2021, already with Joe Biden as president. “With today’s changing technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has been long overdue, no longer meets the requirements to fill the Department of Defense’s resource gaps,” he explained then. Pentagon. In the public explanation of the cancellation of the contract, Amazon’s challenge was not mentioned, but already then the preference for not depending on a single supplier was indicated.
Late last year, the Defense Department invited Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle to bid, although it initially noted that only Amazon and Microsoft had the capacity to meet the requirements. Now, almost a year later, it has chosen to divide the multimillion-dollar technological contract between the four giants. Of these, the one with the smallest cloud computing business is Oracle. The volume of awards that each company receives will be specified throughout the life of the contract, which runs until June 2028.
Storing and processing vast amounts of classified data in the cloud will enable the US military to improve communications with its troops on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to accelerate its war planning and other combat resources. In addition to the economic value of the contract itself, it can lead the way for awards by other federal departments and agencies.
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