The Pentagon has split a $9bn contract for cloud computing services among Google, Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft, one year after scrapping a previous contract that was marred by accusations of political interference by the administration of former US president Donald Trump and bogged down by legal challenges.
The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability succeeds the previous Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (Jedi), which aimed to build a large common commercial cloud for the entire Department of Defense. While the Trump administration wanted to concentrate the cloud computing programme under one provider, the administration of Joe Biden elected to parcel it out to multiple firms as many private sector companies do.
The project is estimated to be completed by June 2028, according to a statement from the Pentagon. The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability “will provide the DOD the opportunity to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from the commercial cloud service providers at the speed of mission, at all classification levels”, the Pentagon said.