This story has been updated with additional comments from the Defense Department.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 The Department of Defense announced Tuesday it canceled its contract with Microsoft for an enterprise cloud to bring decisive data to the battlefield, a nearly four-year-old project that never started because of a challenge by Amazon Web Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Citing the delays, a DoD spokesperson said the requirements of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract worth up to $10 billion \u201cno longer meets the department\u2019s cloud needs,\u201d and the Pentagon announced an alternative to work with both companies, the only two the DoD has found that are capable of filling its requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the new Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, AWS \u2014 along with Microsoft \u2014 is likely to win a piece of the lucrative business it has sought since the acquisition stage for JEDI cloud started 2017. AWS eventually challenged the single-company award in court, partly over accusations that then-President Donald Trump interfered with the decision because of his public feud with Jeff Bezos, who just stepped down as Amazon CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The department plans to send Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability solicitations to the two tech giants in mid-October and said the pair will \u201clikely\u201d be direct awardees, acting DoD CIO John Sherman said. The department aims to make awards to the vendors by April 2022 in order to fulfill the department\u2019s \u201curgent, unmet need\u201d for an enterprise cloud capability, he said. The department also plans to do market research into other U.S. cloud giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we determined that additional vendors can also meet our requirements, then we will extend solicitations to them as well,\u201d Sherman said on a call with reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The department is aiming to make the direct awards by April next year, Sherman said. The cloud contract will be in the \u201cbillions of dollars,\u201d he said, but the amount won\u2019t be finalized until the market research is complete in October. The department anticipates a \u201cfull and open\u201d competition for cloud providers in 2025. The contracts will have a three-year base period and two one-year options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe believe this contract period is both appropriately brief for a direct award and long enough for us to start to leverage the new enterprise capabilities as we fully develop our longer-term plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the press call, Sherman stressed that the new cloud capability was a necessity to enable department initiatives, including the Pentagon\u2019s future war-fighting strategy of Joint All-Domain Command and Control and its Artificial Intelligence and Data Accelerator, announced last month by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. An enterprise cloud is a requirement for JADC2, the Pentagon\u2019s vision for connecting sensors and shooters, according to the three-star tasked with coordinating the concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you think about the challenge we have in AI, in amalgamating data and sharing data, what it means to take processing and move that processing requirement to the tactical edge, without a cloud none of this\u201d is possible, Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, CIO\/J-6 of the Joint Staff, said at the C4ISRNET conference in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The JEDI cloud\u2019s troubles extend back several years when pre-bid protests and a related court case delayed the contract award. After ultimately awarding the cloud contract to Microsoft over Amazon Web Services, largely viewed by experts as an upset, AWS sued the DoD in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in late 2019. AWS alleged the department erred in its technical evaluations and that Trump interfered with the selection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the court halted the department and Microsoft from building the enterprise cloud, delaying the project seemingly indefinitely. Earlier this year, the court ruled that it wouldn\u2019t toss out AWS allegations of political interference, adding months of continued litigation and casting doubt over the future of the JEDI cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a blog post, Microsoft\u2019s President of U.S. Regulated Industries Toni Townes-Whitley wrote that the company is pivoting to the \u201cway forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe DoD has a critical unmet need to bring the power of cloud and AI to our men and women in uniform, modernizing technology infrastructure and platform services technology,\u201d Townes-Whitley wrote. \u201cWe stand ready to support the DoD as they work through their next steps and its new cloud computing solicitation plans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, an AWS spokesperson applauded the department\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe understand and agree with the DoD\u2019s decision,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cUnfortunately, the contract award was not based on the merits of the proposals and instead was the result of outside influence that has no place in government procurement. Our commitment to supporting our nation\u2019s military and ensuring that our warfighters and defense partners have access to the best technology at the best price is stronger than ever.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Top IT staff in the Pentagon have consistently stressed the department\u2019s need for an enterprise cloud to connect war fighters at the tactical edge with huge amounts of data. The department has stated that the JEDI cloud would be crucial to the Pentagon\u2019s artificial intelligence, software development and data storage efforts. The JEDI cloud was supposed to house 80 percent of DoD systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In front of a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week, Sherman reiterated the Pentagon\u2019s need for an enterprise cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe still have an urgent, unmet need for an enterprise cloud capability at all three security levels … that extends all the way from the headquarters all the way to the tactical edge and that has not gone away at this time,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Defense Department announced a new enterprise solution called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":30475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":36,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"10":{"categories":["daily-news-roundup","newsletters","pentagon","industry"],"primary_category":"pentagon"}}},"categories":[6,7,33,106,11,29,13,36,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-27118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-battlefield-tech","category-breaking-news","category-daily-brief","category-disa","category-home","category-industry","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7MJRY4YDJVDBRMPAQOPMBIA2QI","arc_canonical_url":"\/breaking-news\/2021\/07\/06\/pentagon-cancels-controversial-jedi-cloud-contract\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n