Pentagon Asks Tech Giants for Bids on Cloud Contracts

The United States General Services Administration (GSA) announced on Friday that the country’s Department of Defense has made requests for bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle concerning cloud contracts.

This outreach follows the decision made by the Pentagon to set aside a much coveted $10 billion contract which Microsoft won after getting past Amazon’s challenge. The value of the new contracts is still currently unknown, but the Department of Defense roughly calculates that it could be in the region of multiple billions of dollars.

This new collaboration is being referred to as Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), and it may possibly support the best global cloud organizations Amazon and Microsoft, although it could also give two smaller organizations more credibility.

The General Services Administration said in its announcement that the Government looks forward to handing out two Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts to “Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft).” It also stated that the Government has it in mind to hand out to all the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) which show that they can meet the Department’s requirements.

An IDIQ contract usually includes an unspecified amount of services over a specific time period.

After necessary evaluation, the GSA announced that only two American cloud infrastructure providers appear able to comply with the requirements set aside by the Department, with the companies being Amazon and Microsoft.

The requirements contain tactical advantage devices which can function outside orthodox data centers and support every existing level of data classification.

Both Microsoft and Amazon ended up as finalists for a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract in 2019. The contract was meant for one provider only, and was estimated to reach an amount of $10 billion across the span of ten years. Microsoft won it back then, followed by a protest from Amazon before the Pentagon canceled the contract in July.

While Microsoft refused to comment, an Oracle spokesperson touted the company’s excitement at its inclusion in the JWCC, as well as the company’s commitment to high levels of security.