After JEDI cancellation, military expands competition for cloud computing that can scale to defense needs

July 15, 2021
A cloud network in which two enterprise cloud environments exist together looks a lot like what the Air Force is currently working with in Cloud ONE.

WASHINGTON – Now that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials has canceled their signature $10 billion enterprise cloud computing contract, what’s next for the military’s cloud needs? Defense One reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

15 July 2021 -- DOD officials say that the solution will look a lot like a marriage between what’s being offered by Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services. It won’t be the single massive cloud envisioned as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, affectionately called JEDI.

Scale is the operative word. DOD officials have made clear that they’re not going back to the old days of many clouds from tiny vendors with no central cloud environment for data access and distribution. A cloud on the scale of what Amazon, Microsoft, or Google can provide is essential to realize the Pentagon’s dream of joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2.

Today, the pathway looks like a joint Amazon and Microsoft cloud, the two largest companies that were fighting over the JEDI contract. Amazon and Microsoft likely will receive contracts under a new program called the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. But they wouldn't be the only ones.

Related: Microsoft Azure to provide military cloud computing, and help bring trusted computing to the tactical edge

Related: Army modernizes, migrates to cloud computing

Related: U.S. military begins moving its information technology (IT) infrastructure to secure cloud computing

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics

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