WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - Microsoft was awarded a hotly contested contract valued at as much as US$10 billion (S$13.6 billion) to provide cloud computing services to the Pentagon, the Defence Department said in a statement on Friday night (Oct 25).
The decision deals a blow to market leader Amazon.com, which had been battling for the 10-year contract and was seen by many industry analysts as the likely winner. Oracle was another contender.
The Pentagon has said the cloud project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, is intended to help bring the Pentagon's technology into the modern era.
The Defence Department is investing in commercial cloud services, which host computing power and storage in remote data centres, to improve data security and speed up real-time sharing of information across the military.
The Pentagon said the contract was expected to be completed by 2029.
Amazon was long seen to have the upper hand in the competition after it won a lucrative cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency.
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