The Pentagon cloud computing contract has already awarded millions of dollars. They’ve issued over a dozen orders and have many more to come. The contract was launched a year ago and is set to be big business for cloud companies. But a lot of the details are being kept under lock and key. So, what do we know?
The Pentagon Is Pleased With Progress
The director of the Defence Information Systems Agency, Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner said “13 different cloud task orders, over $200m worth of value over the lifecycle” have been completed and another 13 are on the way. He added, “I think it’s a success story”.
Who’s Been Awarded The Jobs?
In December of last year the Pentagon chose industry leaders, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle to furnish cloud services in a contract worth $9bn. It’s not been publicly announced what exactly the jobs that these companies are competing for will involve. All of the designations are unclassified, secret or top-secret. Each company is only guaranteed to secure $100,000. The Pentagon has not shared which companies have already won jobs.
JWCC Prioritised By The Pentagon
In a memo, recently made public, Pentagon Chief Information Officer, John Sherman, instructed the organisation to prioritise JWCC (Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability). He stressed the particular importance of this when dealing with sensitive data. Adding also that many existing cloud services would soon transition to JWCC.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, but perhaps wisely, we don’t know very much about these contracts. It’s interesting to see that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle remain dominant even in this niche, specialist situation that might be better suited to specialist providers. Do you think these generalists will be able to provide the Pentagon with the right level of security and expertise?
