San Fransico: Amazon and Microsoft are battling it out over a $10 billion opportunity to build the US military its first “war cloud” computing system.
However, Amazon’s early hopes of a shock-and-awe victory may be slipping away. Formally called the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military’s computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.
The Defence Department hopes to award the winner-take-all contract as soon as August. Oracle and IBM were eliminated at an earlier round of the contract competition.
But that’s only if the project isn’t derailed first. It faces a legal challenge by Oracle and growing concerns of alleged Pentagon favouritism toward Amazon. Military officials hope to get started soon on what will be a decade-long business partnership they describe as vital to national security. “This is not your grandfather’s internet,” said Daniel Goure, vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a defence-oriented think tank. “You’re talking about a cloud where you can go from the Pentagon literally to the soldier on the battlefield carrying classified information.”
Amazon was considered an early favourite when the Pentagon began detailing its cloud needs in 2017, but its candidacy has been marred by an Oracle allegation that Amazon executives and the Pentagon have been overly cozy. Oracle has a final chance to make its case against Amazon — and the integrity of the government’s bidding process — in a court hearing Wednesday. “This is really the cloud sweepstakes, which is why there are such fierce lawsuits,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.
Ives said the opportunity that was a “no brainer” for Amazon a year ago now may go to Microsoft as well.
