Google, Oracle, IBM also seen as contenders for Pentagon cloud contract

The Pentagon on Tuesday canceled its $10B Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, also known as JEDI, which had become a bone of contention between Amazon and Microsoft. The deal aimed to provide the Defense Department with a centralized “secure cloud environment to rapidly access computing and storage capacity to address warfighting challenges at the speed of relevance.” It would also upgrade its technology for managing data located across thousands of networks and data centers.

Backdrop: Amazon Web Services was considered the frontrunner for the contract before the DoD handed it to Microsoft in 2019. AWS didn’t back down. The company alleged in a lawsuit that the award was tainted by then President Trump’s animus against Jeff Bezos and related litigation threatened to delay the deal for years. There was also a slew of objections from Congress, prompting the Pentagon to acknowledge that advances in cloud computing and the timeframe of the contract could render the scheme obsolete.

“The evolving landscape is what has driven our thinking,” said John Sherman, the Pentagon’s acting chief information officer. “JEDI was the right approach at the time,” but with changing circumstances “we’re in a different place.”

The Pentagon is now planning a multi-vendor approach, where more cloud providers including Google, Oracle and IBM will be allowed to bid for the new contract. The new deal, known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, is also scheduled to run no more than five years. Bidders are expected to be identified by about October, with the new contract expected to be awarded in spring 2022. Seeking Alpha