Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle have been awarded a cloud computing contract, according to the Pentagon, which has a maximum value of $9 billion through 2028.
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, initiative’s results are consistent with the U.S. Defense Department’s efforts to rely on numerous suppliers of remotely managed infrastructure technology rather than a single corporation, a strategy championed during the Trump Administration.
A growing number of companies have also tried to rely on multiple cloud providers. In other instances, they depend on one for the majority of front-end and back-end workloads and the other for specialized skills. Sometimes it comes down to price. Having many clouds could increase an organization’s confidence in their ability to tolerate service interruptions brought on by outages.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, was initially given to Microsoft by the Pentagon in 2019. Amazon, the leading provider of cloud infrastructure, contested the Pentagon’s decision, which led to a court dispute. Oracle also contested the choice made by the Pentagon.
An examination by the Pentagon’s watchdog in 2020 found no evidence to support the conclusion that the Trump Administration had interfered with the contract awarding process. Later, the Pentagon declared that it will continue to work with Microsoft on the JEDI contract.
In order to handle its cloud needs, the Pentagon modified its strategy last year and requested bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. But at the time, the General Services Administration claimed that only Microsoft and Amazon appeared to be able to satisfy the Pentagon’s standards.
The outcome on Wednesday is particularly advantageous for Oracle, which analysts do not believe to be among the leading providers of cloud-based computing services. A small portion of Amazon’s cloud subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, generated $20.5 billion in sales in the third quarter, while Oracle only made $900 million in revenue from cloud infrastructure in the quarter that concluded on August 31.
Indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ, contracts, which might encompass an indefinite number of services for a defined amount of time, have been awarded to all four of the technology businesses.
According to the Defense Department, the goal of this contract is to offer the Department of Defense enterprise-wide, globally accessible cloud services that span all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic level to the tactical edge.