Chronic. The world’s most powerful army failed to win the war against the Taliban in the Afghan mountains, but at least they managed to defeat JEDI. This is not a knight of Star Wars, but of its IT infrastructure project common to the entire Ministry of Defense (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, JEDI). A colossal project that aims to unify the information exchanged by the 2.8 million Pentagon employees. Prepared for very long years, this program aims to tip the entire ministry into the nebulous world of cloud computing and therefore to choose the lucky one who will take on the task. In 2019, he awarded the contract to Microsoft for the modest sum of $ 10 billion (8.5 billion euros).
The intense lobbying brawl led by all the players in the market was then followed by a procedural war. The Oracle company, rejected in the first round, took the case to court, arguing that one of the finalists, Amazon, had offered the services of a former minister to lead the case. Then it was the turn of the same Amazon, big favorite of the competition, to complain to the judges when Microsoft was declared the winner. The Internet giant would have been dismissed, on the instruction of President Donald Trump who does not carry in his heart the owner of the Washington post. The procedure is still ongoing and should not be completed for a year, not counting the possible appeals. Faced with this succession of pitfalls, the Pentagon decided, Tuesday, July 6, to start from scratch, forgetting the JEDI.
Maintain a form of competition
So make way for the JWCC, the “Joint Warfight Cloud Capability”. Much less sexy, but more realistic. In its press release, the Defense Department refers to the evolution of its requirements and the progress of cloud technology to justify its turnaround. He now intends to divide his new contract between several suppliers, including Amazon and Microsoft obviously. In addition to the fact that lengthy legal proceedings may be avoided, this solution will have two other advantages. It will limit the risks of dependency in the event of a cyber attack, and it will maintain a form of competition between players in a rapidly evolving field.
This approach is not unique. While the digital giants, the GAFA, desperately try to lock their users into their own world, they only dream of escaping it. According to a survey cited by the Wall Street Journal, more than 80% of companies now favor the award of their cloud contracts to several players. They don’t want to put all of their eggs in one basket. This is very good news which should encourage the French authorities, having often favored Microsoft solutions, in particular for hosting health data, to diversify their suppliers. And not just for reasons of sovereignty. The future of digital is also played out in these kinds of details.
