New Delhi: The US Defense Department has asked Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle to submit bids for a new, multi-billion-dollar cloud contract Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC).
The JWCC will result in multiple Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contracts. AWS and Microsoft are expected to receive two IDIQ contracts from the federal government. At present, only Amazon Web Services and Microsoft appear able to meet all of the DoD’s requirements, including providing cloud services at all levels of national security classification.
The JWCC contract replaces the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which was worth upwards of $10 billion and was won by Microsoft and challenged by Amazon in a massive legal battle between the two companies. Due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the contract no longer met its needs and was shelved in July this year.
The US General Services Administration (GSA) said only Amazon and Microsoft appear able to comply with all of the Pentagon’s requirements, which include “tactical edge devices” that can operate outside of traditional data centers and support all levels of data classification.
