Aashish Sehrawat
Credit: Zarantech
According to Nextgov, Amazon Web Services has been awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract by the National Security Agency.
The deal, codenamed “WildandStormy,” is said to be part of the NSA’s efforts to modernise sensitive data storage.
Amazon disputed the now-defunct $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) deal in a similar fashion to Microsoft. Following NSA’s announcement that it had chosen AWS for the contract, Microsoft filed an objection with Government Accountability Office in July, according to Nextgov.
According to The Hill, an NSA official stated that the agency “recently won a contract for cloud computing services to assist the Agency,” and that a competitor for the deal has filed a protest.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that it is filing the protest “based on the decision.” “We are exercising our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly.”
All concerns concerning the contract were directed to the NSA’s public affairs department, according to Amazon. We’ve gone out to the National Security Agency and Microsoft for more information.
Amazon and Microsoft fought for years for the $10 billion JEDI cloud services contract from the Defense Department, with Microsoft eventually obtaining the contract. The Biden administration later terminated the deal and divided it up.
As a subsidiary of Amazon, AWS offers cloud computing platforms and APIs on a pay-as-you-go basis to people, organisations, and governments. AWS generated $10 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2020, accounting for 13.5 percent of Amazon’s total revenue. Because AWS’s revenue has increased steadily in the 30-percent level for the previous few quarters, it is far ahead of its competitors, such as Microsoft Azure.
Many intelligence agency contracts have been awarded to Amazon Web Services (AWS), including a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) signed in 2013.