Contract for 10 billion: who will deal with the cloud for the Pentagon

We understand the situation and give the views of the community regarding a potential deal.

A photo - Clem Onojeghuo — unsplash

История вопроса

In 2018, the Pentagon began working on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program (JEDI). It provides for the transfer of all organization data to a single cloud. This even applies to classified information about weapons systems, as well as data on military personnel and combat operations. $10 billion has been allocated for this task.

Cloud tendering has become a corporate battlefield. To participate joined at least nine companies. Here are just a few: Amazon, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and VMware.

Over the past year, many of them have been weeded out, as they did not satisfy requirements prescribed by the Pentagon. Some did not have clearance to work with classified information, and some of them focus on highly specialized services. For example, Oracle is for databases, and VMware is for virtualization.

Google last year independently refused to participate. Their project could conflict with the company's policy regarding the use of artificial intelligence systems in the military sphere. However, the corporation plans to continue working with the authorities in other areas.

There are only two participants left in the race - Microsoft and Amazon. The Pentagon must make its choice until the end of summer.

Debate of the parties

The ten-billion deal caused a great resonance. The main claim to the JEDI project is that the data of the country's central military department will be concentrated with one contractor. A number of members of Congress insist that with such volumes of data several companies should serve at once, and this guarantees greater security.

A similar point of view share and at IBM with Oracle. Last October, Sam Gordy, an IBM executive, saidthat the mono-cloud approach goes against the trends of the IT industry moving towards hybrid and multi-cloud.

But John Gibson, chief executive of the US Department of Defense, noted that such infrastructure would cost the Pentagon too much. And the JEDI project was just conceived to centralize the data of five hundred cloud projects (page 7). Now, due to the difference in the quality of storages, the speed of access to data suffers. A single cloud will eliminate this problem.

The community also has questions about the contract itself. Oracle, for example, believes that it was originally compiled with an eye on Amazon to win. The US congressmen share the same point of view. Last week, Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to National Security Adviser John Bolton requesting that the signing of the contract be postponed. He noted that the procedure for choosing a cloud provider was "dishonest."

Oracle even filed a complaint with the US Accounts Chamber. But it did not bring results. Later, representatives of the company went to court, where they said that the decisions made by the state office were compromised by a conflict of interest. By words representatives of Oracle, two employees of the Pentagon were offered jobs at AWS during the tender. But last week the judge dismissed the claim.

Analysts say that the reason for this behavior of Oracle are potential financial loss. Several contracts of the company with the US Department of Defense were at risk. In any case, Pentagon officials deny violations, and they say that there can be no talk of revising the current selection results.

Likely outcome

Experts note that with a high degree of probability, the cloud provider chosen by the Pentagon will be Amazon. If only because the company sent to promote their interests in the government sector as much as 13 million dollars - and this is only for 2017. This amount comparable to thatthat Microsoft and IBM jointly spent.

A photo - Asael Pena — unsplash

But there is an opinion that all is not lost for Microsoft. Last year the company concluded a deal to service the cloud structure of the US Intelligence Community. It includes a half dozen national agencies, including the CIA and the NSA.

Also in January of this year, the IT corporation signed a new five-year contract with the US Department of Defense in the amount of $1,76 billion. It is believed that the new agreements are able to tip the scales in favor of Microsoft.

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Source: habr.com