The Department of Defense announced Tuesday that it has canceled a $10 billion cloud computing contract that was the cause of a major legal battle between tech giants Amazon and Microsoft.
The Defense Department said it canceled the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract because “due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs.”
Amazon sued over the contract going to Microsoft in late 2019, and it has been held up in court for many months, forcing the Defense Department to consider moving in a new direction in order to move forward with modernizing its IT operations.
Amazon, the world’s most valuable company and the market leader in cloud computing, argued in 2019 that President Donald Trump’s prejudice against the company and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, played a role in the Defense Department unfairly giving the contract to Microsoft.
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“With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD’s capability gaps,” a Defense Department spokesperson told FedScoop.
However, the fight over the large government cloud computing contract is not over yet, as the Defense Department said Tuesday that it still needs third-party cloud capability services and announced a new multicompany contract known as Join Warfighter Cloud Capability, which Amazon and Microsoft are expected to vie for.
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The two tech companies are the only cloud service providers that can meet the Pentagon’s needs, the Defense Department says, but it will also do market research to see if other cloud companies can meet its requirements.
