Why Microsoft lost $10 bln JEDI contract?

In October 2019, the U.S. Defense Department awarded a controversial contract to Microsoft. In January, the Pentagon said in a statement that “regardless of the JEDI Cloud litigation outcome, the Department continues to have an urgent, unmet requirement for enterprise-wide, commercial cloud service.” Amazon claws back Four months later, the ecommerce giant’s bid to claw back the JEDI deal came back to life after a U.S. Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith rejected motions by the DoD and Microsoft to dismiss Amazon’s challenge of the contract award. To put matters to rest, the DoD said on July 6 it cancelled the JEDI project citing “evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances”. Sherman said that a Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability project will replace JEDI, and that both Amazon and Microsoft are “likely” to be awarded contracts. “We understand the DoD’s rationale, and we support them and every military member who needs the mission-critical 21st century technology,” Microsoft said in response to Pentagon’s announcement.