The Pentagon awarded a massive contract of cloud contracts, splitting it between four big tech companies Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle.
The $9 billion cloud computing contracts will be dealt out separately to each company.
It matters because the move hedges the military’s bet and gives them access to all of the major cloud service providers.
Originally, the Pentagon moved to award a big $10 billion cloud computing contract just to Microsoft in 2019. But Amazon sued.
Amazon said the Trump administration had an anti-Amazon bias, which impacted the awarding of the contract. Eventually that contract was voided by the Pentagon, and a new bid was launched.
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability is the multi-cloud successor to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, which was project to modernize IT in order to build a big cloud as a commercial space for the Department of Defense.
The contracts will run until 2028. They will set up enterprise-wise, globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels.
Department of Defense spokesperson U.S. Navy Commander Jessica McNulty said in a statement the JWCC was a multiple-award procurement composed of four contracts with a shared ceiling of $9 billion.
It comes after the Pentagon originally delayed a decision to award an enterprise-wise JWCC contract.
Several years ago, the Pentagon tried to move its cloud using the JEDI concept.
But that proposal died after litigation stopped the procurement process.
This new deal could put the military more in line with private-sector companies, many of whom split up their cloud computing work among multiple vendors.
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