How Permanent Is Microsoft's Shocking JEDI Win?
The conventional wisdom was that the massive Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract was Amazon Web Services' to lose.
Then Microsoft was named on Friday as the winner of the contract to be the sole cloud contractor for the Pentagon -- a deal valued at up to $10 billion over 10 years if all the options are exercised.
Here's how Adam Mazmanian at Federal Computer Week described what it means for Microsoft in a comprehensive piece on the deal:
The market agreed on Monday morning, with TheStreet reporting:
Victory laps by Microsoft could be premature, however.
Kara Swisher, the New York Times columnist and CNBC contributor who has some of the best sources in Silicon Valley, warned everyone not to expect AWS to take the decision as final. Especially given President Donald Trump's public statements about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
In an appearance Monday on CNBC, Swisher said:
Some of the Trump rumors come from former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Here's a CNBC report on a portion of Mattis' book:
Of Microsoft, Swisher said:
Amazon's public statements so far, out of a spokesperson, are that the company was "surprised" by the decision. No word yet on whether it'll decide to tie it up in litigation or focus on winning some of the many other cloud service deals that are expected to come out of the U.S. federal government over the next few years.
This decision is a big win for Microsoft. As for the challenge aspect, think of it like the replay rule in the NFL. The refs have to overturn the ruling on the field, and the ruling on the field is that the JEDI contract belongs to Microsoft. But as the decision Friday showed, anything can happen, and may yet.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 28, 2019 at 3:34 PM