According to the Pentagon, the four major cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle) would receive a contract for up to $9 billion until 2028.
At first, Microsoft was set to receive the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract from the Pentagon in 2019.
Amazon opposed the Pentagon’s decision in court, which led to a legal dispute. Oracle also opposed the decision taken by the Pentagon.
The Pentagon modified its strategy last year and requested proposals for cloud solutions from Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.
However, at the time, the General Services Administration claimed that only Microsoft and Amazon appeared to be able to satisfy the Pentagon’s standards.
Contracts with indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity, abbreviated as IDIQ, have been awarded to all four of the technology companies. This designation indicates that the agreements can cover the supply of an unspecified number of services over a predetermined amount of time.
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.
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.
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