Pentagon cancels $10bn JEDI cloud computing contract

The controversial Trump-era JEDI cloud computing contract has been scrapped, according to multiple media reports sourcing the US Department of Defense (DoD).

The $10bn contract was awarded to Microsoft in late 2019 but the decision was robustly challenged by Amazon in a lawsuit which claimed that the DoD’s decision was full of “egregious errors” resulting from “improper pressure from [then President] Trump”.

Former President Trump has publicly feuded with the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, since his 2016 presidential campaign.

It will instead seek new solicitations for an updated Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract, with direct awards for Amazon and Microsoft likely.

Other top cloud companies include Oracle Corp, Alphabet Inc’s Google and IBM Corp. Google and IBM said they were both interested in working with the DoD, but have not publicly confirmed that they will bid for any JWCC contracts.

The DoD has welcomed companies other than Microsoft and Amazon participating in JWCC, adding they would need to meet unnamed requirements likely focused, in part, on data security.

While the Trump administration wanted a single cloud-computing provider for the DoD as envisaged under JEDI, the JWCC contract envisages parceling out the DoD’s cloud computing requirements to multiple firms.

Such a move would put the US military more in line with private-sector companies, where it is standard commercial practice to split up their cloud computing requirements among multiple vendors to avoid being locked in to any specific vendor and to enhance technical resilience.

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