The US cancels JEDI, its multi-million dollar contract with Microsoft
- computing
The Pentagon made the radical decision to cancel a multimillion-dollar contract signed with Microsoft to implement a cloud computing system that would improve the computing infrastructure of the United States Department of Defense.
This contract is known by its acronym JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) and had been signed in 2019 for the sum of $10,000 million dollars. But once the final signature was drawn, JEDI's progress was halted almost immediately by a lawsuit brought by Amazon challenging the Pentagon's decision.
Everything indicates that the United States Government prefers to avoid facing a lawsuit that could delay the project for several years.
According to Amazon, there were political and not technical reasons behind the final decision. In particular, they charged that signing with Microsoft was meaningless if Amazon Web Services' technology was considered to be superior in any metric considered within the JEDI bid.
According to the company, the decision in favor of Microsoft was "politically corrupt" and due only to the "personal interest" of then President Donald Trump.
That personal interest seems to have had to do mainly with the bad relationship between Trump and Jeff Bezos due to the criticisms made by The Washington Post - a newspaper owned by Bezos - regarding the administration of the former president of the United States.
The Defense Department's announcement indicates that, from now on, they will seek that both companies submit new proposals for a joint solution, since only Microsoft and Amazon are in a position to meet the required requirements.
