Microsoft And Amazon Lock Horns Again On $10 Bln Government Deal

(RTTNews) - Two of the world's biggest companies, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) and Amazon.com (AMZN), have locked horns again as Amazon's cloud service AWS was awarded a $10 billion contract by the Pentagon.

The contract, codenamed WildandStormy, was awarded to Amazon Web Services by the National Security Services (NSA). According to reports, Microsoft is challenging the tender at the Government Accountability Office as it believes that Azure, the Microsoft counterpart of cloud computing, is far more efficient for the role.

Back in 2019, a similar complaint was made by Amazon when the, then Trump administration, offered the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) to Microsoft. The contract was supposed to run for a decade but the Department of Defense said last month, "Due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs."

The present contract has garnered a similar reaction and this time, by Microsoft, as confirmed by an NSA spokesperson, "NSA recently awarded a contract for cloud computing services to support the Agency. The unsuccessful offeror has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The Agency will respond to the protest in accordance with appropriate federal regulations."

GAO has till October 29 to evaluate and come up with a response.

The security watchdog is looking to harness a hybrid computing infrastructure to manage "commercial cloud infrastructure". While the companies will have to wait till the response of the administration, it is a no man's guess that the rivalry for superiority will go on.