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US Pentagon cancels JEDI cloud computing contract

July 6, 2021

The US will replace JEDI with a new multicloud program that will be offered exclusively to Amazon or Microsoft. Microsoft shares dropped with the news.

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Washington Pentagon building
The famous Pentagon which controls the US military machineImage: Liu Jie/Photoshot/picture alliance

The US Defense Department on Tuesday canceled a $10 billion JEDI cloud-computing project, initially awarded to Microsoft in 2019.

A Pentagon said it was now looking at taking bids for a new contract, which, it has revealed, only Amazon and Microsoft Corp. have the resources to undertake.

Former US President Donald Trump derided the then Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for filing a lawsuit to object to the initial awarding of the contract to Microsoft.

What was the JEDI project?

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) aimed to make the work of the US Defense Department more agile by allowing users to have better access to data.

The $10 billion was awarded the project in 2019, with Amazon missing out.

Amazon filed a lawsuit stating the contract process reflected undue influence from former Trump, which a Federal Court in April refused to dismiss.

Tuesday′s news had Microsoft shares dropping by over 1% while main rival Amazon saw its value rise by 3%.

What will replace JEDI?

Now the Pentagon is starting a new bidding process for what it called a multicloud, multivendor program.

"The Department intends to seek proposals from a limited number of sources, namely the Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as available market research indicates that these two vendors are the only Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) capable of meeting the Department's requirements," the US defense department said.

Microsoft said in a statement it was confident it will "continue to be successful as the DoD selects partners for new work.″

jc/aw (Reuters, AFP)