Amazon Fights for the Return of the JEDI

On Jan. 23, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) continued its fight to bring the Pentagon's $10 billion JEDI contract back to the negotiating table, petitioning the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to halt plans to award the contract to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) instead. Amazon is claiming that the Department of Defense allegedly allowed President Trump to exercise "improper influence" over the contract process, ultimately costing the company a historic 10-year cloud computing contract. But while the President may make an easy target, it might be possible that AWS just wasn't equipped for the job.

JEDI, short for "Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure," is one of the strategies the U.S. government intends to use to streamline its crucial computer infrastructure. The project will cover 1,700 data centers and move 3.4 million end users and 4 million endpoint devices off private servers and into the cloud. The $10 billion contract will run through October 2029, enabling Microsoft to develop cloud infrastructure across the Defense Department.

JEDI will require advanced cloud computing that can support a large-scale modernization. Hybrid cloud is an ideal IT strategy that would ease the transition to the cloud for such a highly regulated and more cautious organization. Hybrid cloud systems allow data and applications to be shared between major public cloud providers, a private cloud, or on-premise equipment.

Source Fool.com