(RightIsRight.co) – The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure – JEDI – is the DOD’s program for a secure military data cloud that can send and receive classified information everywhere in the US military quickly and reliably. The project was announced three years ago, and when it’s in service, it’ll support military operations with practically limitless data and computing power.
Unfortunately, two companies are trying to get the JEDI contract – Microsoft and Amazon – and the dispute over which one should actually get it is delaying the whole program. Microsoft was awarded the contract in October 2019, but Amazon filed a suit at the Court of Federal Claims, and the court ordered Microsoft to stop work on February 13, 2020 – one day before the system was due to go live. The DoD re-awarded the contract to Microsoft, but in September the court ordered work to stop again.
The earliest the case could be settled is late March 2021, and it could possibly stretch out several months beyond that. The longer the court delays JEDI, the more likely it is that military organizations will adopt other cloud solutions before it’s ready, so the Pentagon ends up with multiple clouds in use – exactly the problem JEDI was supposed to solve.
Microsoft’s JEDI system is ready to go, and there’s no chance the DOD will switch to Amazon’s version at this point. All the legal action is doing is dragging out the procurement process and making life harder for our troops — but the court won’t let it drop.
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