The United States Department of Defense recently awarded Microsoft its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, worth up to $10 billion over 10 years.
The contract specifically calls for the supply of infrastructure and platform services for the Pentagon’s business and mission operations. Microsoft beat out Google, Oracle and IBM, and its biggest rival, Amazon.
In a statement, Amazon said it was surprised to have lost the huge contract, despite being considered the front-runner for the most part.
“We’re surprised about this conclusion,” an Amazon Web Services told GeekWire. “AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion. We remain deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield where security, efficiency, resiliency, and scalability of resources can be the difference between success and failure.”
Google told GeekWire it dropped out of the running for the contract this past October, saying they “couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles” and that portions of the contract “were out of scope with our current government certifications.”
“Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it,” the company wrote.
The department said the contract will specifically address urgent and important unmet warfighter needs for modern cloud infrastructure at all three classification levels delivered out to the tactical edge.
The base period for the contract is two years with a guarantee of $1 million. The department has estimated an expenditure of $210 million on user adoption during this base period. It will review the performance of the contract before deciding to exercise any of the options, as per the announcement by the department.
The expected date of completion for this particular project is Oct. 24, 2029.
Pentagon has awarded over $11 billion across 10 separate cloud contracts over the last two years. The department plans additional contracts for cloud services and complementary migration and integration solutions necessary to achieve successful cloud adoption for more effective execution of its cloud strategy, as per a press release by the department.