The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) just opened up bidding for its cloud computing services contract. The contract is part of the DoD’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) IT modernization project and the winner of the contract will provide cloud services for all branches of the military.
The Defense Department’s request for proposal (RFP) was made available yesterday and it’s anticipated that all the major cloud companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle will bid on the project. According to Reuters, only AWS is approved to handle top secret data from the government.
The RFP requests that a single company work on the DoD’s cloud computing system but Congress has expressed concern over the size and duration of the arrangement. The contract could be worth up to $10 billion over 10 years. But according to TechCrunch, the Pentagon said that the contract will only be for the first two years and after that other providers will likely be involved in providing cloud services for JEDI.
According to The Register, the RFP includes line items for platform-as-a-service (PaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and a cloud support package. There are also terms in the contract for lowering the DoD’s prices if the vendor’s public commercial prices are lower.
While AWS is considered a shoe-in for the project, the other cloud players are expected to submit bids. The deadline for proposals is September 17.