Microsoft, Amazon are the last bidders standing for the $10 billion DoD JEDI cloud contract
U.S. Department of Defense officials have decided this week that the only two cloud vendors able to meet their requirements for a huge, winner-take-all project are Amazon and Microsoft. That decision takes Oracle and IBM out of the running for the $10 billion JEDI contract.
The DoD's JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract is designed to upgrade legacy systems with newer cloud services. According to the original proposal, "JEDI Cloud will provide enterprise-level, commercial IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) to the Department and any mission partners for all Department business and mission operations."
Google dropped out of the JEDI bidding last year, acknowledging it couldn't meet the requirements (and citing its AI principles, as well). Oracle officials had protested the bidding process, claiming bias against a former military employee who also worked at Amazon AWS. Oracle filed a lawsuit over this late last year. In February his year, it looked like the DoD was going to have to postpone the award of the contract as a result of a required review.
The DoD was expected to name a winner in April, but now the soonest the JEDI winner will get the nod is mid-July, according to Bloomberg.
Over the past year-plus Microsoft has been working to get all its required certifications lined up so that it can meet the JEDI requirements.