- The U.S. department of defense has said Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon will share in the Pentagon’s $9 billion contract, the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, to build its cloud computing network.
- The Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability is intended to provide access to unclassified, secret, and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe.
- The contract will be awarded in parts, with a total estimated completion date of June 2028 and DoD can now choose multiple services under one contract.
The U.S. department of defense has announced that it has awarded the Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contracts to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft Corporation, and Oracle.
A lawsuit brought by AWS for JEDI contract
Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon will share in the Pentagon’s $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network. This move has come after a year of political accusations over the previously announced JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract with only Microsoft. DoD (U.S. Department of Defense) in 2019 contracted Microsoft the $10bn, 10-year JEDI project.
However, following a lawsuit brought by AWS, the DoD canceled the JEDI with Microsoft contract last year. The same year in November, the DoD invited AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle to enter the bid for the new JWCC deal. The DoD did not mention the legal challenges which had come from Amazon as a losing bidder, behind the JEDI cancellation.
But, there have been reports that the Trump administration wanted the cloud computing program under one provider. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s administration wanted to work with multiple groups to share the project.
Part of the Pentagon’s modern war operations
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) is a multiple-award contract that will allow the DoD to acquire authorized commercial cloud services directly from the Cloud Service Providers. It provides access to unclassified, secret, and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe at the speed of mission, at all classification levels, from headquarters to the tactical edge. It is expected to serve as a pillar for the Pentagon’s modern war operations.
The contract will be awarded in parts, with a total estimated completion date of June 2028. According to DoD’s statement, it can choose services such as global accessibility, available and resilient services, centralized management and distributed control, ease of use, commercial parity, elastic computing, storage, and network infrastructure, advanced data analytics, fortified security and tactical edge devices under one contract. The announcement said;
« This Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle offers commercial pricing, or better, and streamlined provisioning of cloud services. »