Washington: Pentagon said on Tuesday it canceled the disputed cloud computing contract with Microsoft which in the end could be worth $ 10 billion.
It will actually pursue an agreement with Microsoft and Amazon and maybe other cloud service providers.
“With the technology environment shifting, it has become clear that the Cloud Jedi contract, which has long been delayed, no longer fulfills the requirements to fill DOD’s ability gap,” Pentagon said in a statement.
The statement did not directly state that the Pentagon faced legal challenges extended by Amazon against the original $ 1 million contract given to Microsoft.
Amazon argued that Microsoft Award was tarnished by politics, especially the antagonism of President Donald Trump against the Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos.
Bezos has a Washington post, news outlets are often criticized by Trump.
Information officer of the Head of the Pentagon, John Sherman, told reporters Tuesday that during a long legal battle with Amazon, “landscapes have evolved” with new possibilities for large-scale cloud computing services.
Thus it was decided, he said, to start again and look for some vendors.
Sherman said Jedi would be replaced by a new program called the cloud warfighter shared capabilities, and that Amazon and Microsoft “possibility” will be given business parts, although not guaranteed.
Sherman said three other big cloud service providers – Google, IBM and Oracle also qualified.
Microsoft said in response to the Announcement of the Pentagon, “we understand the reason for DOD, and we support them and every member of the military who requires the critical 21st century technology Jedi’s mission will provide.
DOD faces a difficult choice: Continue with what can occur in the litigation battle Over the years or found another way forward.
“The Jedi project began with a $ 1 million contract award for Microsoft, intended as a first step in the 10-year agreement which could reach a value of $ 10 billion.
The project that will replace it is a five-year program; Sherman said there was no right contract value that had been set but it would be “in billions.” Sherman said the government would negotiate the number of Microsoft will be paid to stop the 2019 deal This project is intended to store and process a large number of confidential data, allowing the US military to improve communication with the army on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to accelerate the planning skills and battle of war.
The Jedi contract was mired in the legal challenge almost as well as being given to Microsoft in October 2019.
Lose Losder, Amazon web service, went to court on the grounds that the Pentagon process was defective and unfair, including it was incorrectly influenced by politics.
, This year the Pentagon has hinted that it could be a contract memo, by saying in May that it was forced to reconsider his choice after a federal judge in April rejected the Pentagon’s step to have the main parts of the dismissed Amazon lawsuit.
Jedi Saga is unusual for the political dimension associated with Trump.
In April 2020, the Office of the Department of Defense Inspector General concluded that the contract process was in line with the standard of legal and government purchases.
The Inspector General did not find evidence of a white house disorder in the contract award process, but the review also said investigators could not fully review the problem because the White House would not allow access to the witnesses.
Five months later, the Pentagon reiterated Microsoft as a contract winner, but the work was still stalled by the Challenge of the Amazon Law.
On the April 2020 report, the Office of Inspector General did not draw conclusions about whether Redmond, Microsoft Corp.
based in Washington was declared appropriately the winner.
Instead, it sees whether the decision-making process is correct and legal.
It also examines allegations of unethical behavior by the Pentagon officials involved in this issue and generally determine that every ethical deviation does not affect results.
The review did not find the proof of white home pressure for the Pentagon to support Microsoft’s offer, but also said it could not determine the interaction of the White House with the Pentagon decision maker.