Proposed military cloud project JEDI inches forward, but is it doomed by its designed utility?

The $10 billion, 10-year project, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, has become one of the many political tempests roiling the day-to-day operation of the federal government.

Amazon lost in its bid on the project last year, says CEO Jeff Bezos, because of a vendetta that he says President Donald Trump is waging against him. Bezos owns the storied Washington Post, which carries stories that Trump complains are unflattering toward him.

Amazon Web Services sued in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims late last year, alleging “prejudicial errors” that resulted in Microsoft winning the lucrative and high-profile development contract.

Microsoft and the Defense Department have moved with some caution since the suit was filed. They publicly have said they would stay their hands until Feb. 11.

A court decision in favor of Amazon would, at the minimum, mean further delays as both sides continue the legal battle. Or, it could render unusable work completed by Microsoft in the interim.

Pentagon officials steadfastly maintain that this cloud infrastructure — some of which would be classified — is vital to national security.

In any event, Defense officials Jan. 6 issued a seemingly innocuous $1 million task order for “JEDI Cloud Tactical Edge Device Accreditation and Training” to Microsoft.

The agreement represents the first significant public expenditure on the sole-provider JEDI project, according to government-technology publication fedscoop.

Little else is known about the contract, reports fedscoop. It is described as involving unclassified infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

It is worth noting that the JEDI project might turn out to be another of the enormous and cumbersome military-branch-spanning projects popular with Defense department officials in the last several years.

Military-focused publication Breaking Defense has reported this month on the conflict between U.S. Army and Air Force leaders over the Advanced Battle Management System now being tested.

The system was proposed as a command-and-control package for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Official nomenclature among leaders and engineers indicates that it is evolving into an Air Force project shared with other branches.

The fundamental differences between the branches as well as differences of the scale of warfighting assets mean there needs to be some customization, according to skeptics in the forces.

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Amazon  |  AWS  |  customer wins  |  edge computing  |  IaaS  |  Microsoft  |  PaaS