The US Department of Defense (DoD) has cancelled a nearly two-year-old $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud-computing contract announcing intentions to pursue a fresh deal.
The JEDI contract was awarded to Microsoft in 2019, but it was put on hold after Amazon filed a lawsuit challenging the decision alleging political inclinations. The contract involved migrating DoD’s computing infrastructure and data to the Cloud to make the department more agile.
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In a statement, DoD said that the older contract no longer meets its requirements due to ‘evolving requirements, increased Cloud conversancy, and industry advances’. The department has already initiated contract termination procedures.
DoD acting chief information officer John Sherman said: “JEDI was developed at a time when the department’s needs were different and both the CSPs technology and our cloud conversancy was less mature.
“In light of new initiatives like JADC2 and AI and Data Acceleration (ADA), the evolution of the cloud ecosystem within DoD, and changes in user requirements to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute mission, our landscape has advanced and a new way-ahead is warranted to achieve dominance in both traditional and non-traditional warfighting domains.”
The Pentagon, the headquarters of DoD, now plans to proceed with the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) multi-Cloud/multi-vendor indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract.
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By GlobalDataThe plan involves dividing the work between Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as they are capable of meeting the department’s requirements.
However, the Pentagon may also negotiate with other vendors if they meet the DoD’s requirements.
The first awards are expected by April next year, according to a Reuters report.
