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Pentagon Beams Down $10bn JEDI Contract to Microsoft: Windows Giant Beats Off Bezos

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the people-that-brought-you-Clippy dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

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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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:46AM (#912286)

    Task & Purpose: 11 of the best bits from the book James Mattis doesn’t want you to read [taskandpurpose.com]

    Trump ordered Mattis to 'screw Amazon'

    Writing about how Mattis always tried to translate the president's demands into ethical, well-meaning outcomes, Snodgrass reveals that Trump called Mattis in the summer of 2018 and directed him to "screw Amazon" out of a chance to bid on a $10 billion cloud networking contract.

    Trump has long held a grudge against Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. He's accused Amazon of scamming the Postal Service (it's not), and has railed against The Post as a "lobbying tool for Amazon," often after the paper reports on news unfavorable to the president.

    Snodgrass writes: "Relaying the story to us during Small Group, Mattis said, 'We're not going to do that. This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically."

    That contract award is still in dispute, at the direction of The White House.

    Mattis resigned 10 months ago. Want to bet rumpo took advantage of his absence to fuck with the procurement process in the meantime? Its not like people with narcissistic personality disorder ever just give up on a grudge, they keep grinding and grinding until either they get the results they want or they are overcome by events.