The Department of Defense is terminating its $ 10 billion cloud contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). The Pentagon said it had “initiated contract termination procedures” in a press release shared Tuesday, stating that “the department has determined that the JEDI cloud contract is no longer meeting its requirements due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversation and industry advances . ”
With JEDI, the Department of Defense had planned to modernize its IT infrastructure, but the contract did not get any further since the Pentagon awarded it to Microsoft in 2019 due to a legal challenge by Amazon. A month after JEDI went to Redmond, Amazon filed a formal lawsuit in US federal court claiming the Pentagon had shown “unmistakable bias” in evaluating the two companies.
When the lawsuit was finally unsealed later that year, it emerged that Amazon believed it lost the contract due to interference from former President Donald Trump. According to the company, Trump launched “repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to divert the JEDI contract away from AWS in order to harm his supposed political enemy, Jeffrey P. Bezos.”
Shortly after the Department of Defense announced that it was not making any progress with JEDI, Microsoft posted a blog post about the decision. “We understand the motivations of the DOD and we support them and any military member who needs the 21st century business critical technology that JEDI would have provided. The DOD was faced with a difficult decision: to pursue a potentially year-long litigation or find another way forward, ”the company said. “The security of the United States is more important than any single contract, and we know that Microsoft will do well if the nation is doing well.”
However, Microsoft went on to say that the episode highlights the need for lawmakers to deal with the contract avoidance process. “The 20 months since the DOD selected Microsoft as a JEDI partner highlight issues that deserve policymakers’ attention: If a company can delay critical technology upgrades for those who defend our nation for years, it must Protest process will be reformed, “it said.
We asked Amazon for their response to the situation and will update this article as we hear from the company.
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