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Pentagon beams down $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft: Windows giant beats off Bezos

Microsoft has been awarded the $10bn decade-long US Department of Defense JEDI IT supply contract that will see the nation's military switch to the cloud.

The Redmond giant's Azure platform will play host to the US armed forces in an attempt to overhaul and streamline the Pentagon's IT infrastructure under a single umbrella – or single point of failure, to put it another way. Microsoft share price rose on the news in after-hours trading.

"The National Defense Strategy dictates that we must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform," Dept of Defense (DoD) Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said in announcing the award.

"The DoD Digital Modernization Strategy was created to support this imperative. This award is an important step in execution of the Digital Modernization Strategy."

The decision will no doubt come as a disappointment to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the presumed front-runner for the single-vendor deal since it was first announced.

Due to the massive requirements of the winner-takes-all contract, the security clearances required and the mandate that it go to a single provider, AWS and Microsoft were seen as the only two qualified candidates for the deal.

In awarding the contract to Microsoft, the Pentagon will avoid further allegations that it collaborated with AWS to stack the deck in its favor, a complaint which has dogged the process from its outset.

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