After canceling its $10 billion JEDI contract with Microsoft last year, the Pentagon has awarded a new $9 billion contract to four tech giants to build its cloud computing network.
The contract, formerly named “JEDI”, is now called “Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability” (JWCC). It has been awarded to Amazon Web Services, Google Support Services, Microsoft and Oracle.
In 2019, the US Department of Defense awarded Microsoft the JEDI contract, worth $10 billion over 10 years. But, following a lawsuit by AWS, the department terminated the contract in July 2021. In November of the same year, the Pentagon asked AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle to resubmit their applications for the new JWCC contract.
A multi-year multicloud arrangement
The JWCC is a multi-award contract under which the U.S. Department of Defense can acquire commercial cloud computing capabilities and services directly from winners, “at mission pace, at all classification levels, from neighborhood general on the tactical periphery,” the Pentagon explains. This means that he can contract services that allow military personnel to access unclassified, secret and top secret data.
The ministry can choose services like elastic computing, storage, network infrastructure, advanced data analytics, hardened security and advanced tactical devices, the announcement said. According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon has set the contract completion date for June 2028.
With four vendors in place, the Pentagon is opting for a multicloud arrangement rather than putting all its eggs in one basket.
Source: ZDNet.com