The Pentagon said on Wednesday (December 7) that it has awarded cloud computing contracts worth USD 9 billion to Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. Previous such deal has been scrapped due to dispute between two of these firms.
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) is a “multiple-award contract vehicle that will provide the DoD the opportunity to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from the commercial Cloud Service Providers,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Defense Department spokesperson Commander Jessica McNulty told AFP that JWCC is “composed of four contracts with a shared ceiling of $9 billion.”
Pentagon had scrapped a USD 10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing contract, thus sidestepping bitter dispute between Amazon and Microsoft.
The Defense Department said the contract was canceled because it no longer met current needs, and that it would start a process for a new “multi-cloud/multi-vendor” computing contract.
Microsoft had won the previous contract in 2019. This had led to challenge from Amazon with allegations that company was shut out of the deal because of what it called Trump’s vendetta against the company and its chief executive Jeff Bezos.
Amazon was considered front runner for JEDI considering Amazon Wed Services dominates cloud computing arena. The company already supplies classified servers for government agencies like the CIA.
Officials said at the time that instead of going forward with the deal in the face of litigation, the government would start over with the aim of getting the most up-to-date technology.
(With inputs from agencies)