The Pentagon cancels the JEDI contract, disputed between Microsoft and Amazon

The Pentagon announced the withdrawal of the JEDI contract for the US Army cloud, which Amazon and Microsoft were arguing to the sound of legal battles. The Ministry of Defense has decided to start overasking for new proposals from online service providers.

JEDI: the Pentagon cancels the contract with Microsoft for the Cloud after the Amazon lawsuits

JEDI stands for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. A titanic cloud project, to allow better collaboration between the various branches of the huge American army. Complex for the size of the structure and for the very high safety standards required. A contract from a whopping 10 billion dollars, which had been won by Microsoft. But Amazon had not accepted the defeat, accusing the Redmond company of bending the rules of the race. It was then recalls on appeal, blocking the deal. That On Tuesday 6 July, the Ministry of Defense canceled it definitively.

In the motives of the Pentagon no reference to the ongoing proceedings between the two companies of Silicon Valley. In fact, we read “due to the evolution of regulations, increased convergence to the cloud and industry improvements, the JEDI contract no longer corresponds to our needs”.

The Pentagon therefore decided to launch a new contract open to multiple companies. The new project is called Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC). And the US Army has specified that it will ask Amazon and Microsoft for a proposal, which are the only companies with the infrastructure to guarantee the desired service.

In essence, this decision canceled the contract and re-established the terms of the contract. The JEDI contract was contested by Amazon, saying it lost the tender because of the Trump administration bias towards then Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. (Trump has repeatedly declared the Washington Post, owned by the billionaire, “fake new”). In a report published in April, the Pentagon explained that i relations with the White House had been marginal.

Microsoft commented declare they understand the position of the Ministry of Defense. But he also wrote that “The 20 months since the Defense Department chose Microsoft for JEDI contracts underscores the problem: when can a company delay for years the technology needed to defend our nationthe appeal mechanism needs reform ”.

The terms of the new contract have not yet been established. We will keep you posted.