DoD Cancels JEDI Cloud Contract

In July, the Department of Defense (DoD) canceled the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract. AWS and Microsoft Azure had been locked in never-ending legal fights for the contract.

The DoD said due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy and industry advances, the JEDI contract no longer meets its needs. The Department continues to have unmet cloud capability gaps. These needs have only advanced in recent years with efforts such as Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration (ADA) initiative.

AWS expected to win the JEDI project. However, the Pentagon instead awarded it to Microsoft. AWS blamed then-President Trump and his feelings toward former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Judges have sided with AWS, blocking Microsoft’s ability to start work on JEDI. The effort to upgrade the military’s systems to modern cloud computing then stalled.