Microsoft unravels for the NSA cloud contract to Amazon
Amazon gets a cloud deal with NSA, the US government intelligence agency, but Microsoft protests. All the details
The National Security Agency (NSA), the US government's national security intelligence agency, has awarded a contract to provide cloud computing services to Amazon Web Services, the specialized company of the Amazon group. The contract is worth $ 10 billion.
THE MICROSOFT PROTEST
Microsoft, Amazon's rival for cloud contracts on national security, had also applied for the offer from the NSA, but was rejected. On July 21, the company filed a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office, an independent federal agency that deals with contractual disputes. A decision is expected on 29 October.
THE MICROSOFT-AMAZON CLASH ON THE CLOUD
The contract between the NSA and Amazon, writes the Washington Post , comes in the wake of the long dispute over the JEDI contract – always related to cloud services, and always worth 10 billion – that the US Department of Defense had assigned to Microsoft, but which was eventually canceled . There are protests by Amazon, which claimed that Microsoft's choice was influenced by Donald Trump's hostility towards Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post , a newspaper very critical of the former president.
AMAZON AND THE CLOUD FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCIES
Amazon is an important player in the cloud services market for American national security agencies: it already has, since 2013, a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA: the foreign spy agency) for 600 million dollars. If it manages to overcome the legal controversy that started with Microsoft's protest, the contract with the NSA would allow Amazon to increase the advantage over its rivals.
Last year, retired General Keith Alexander, a former director of the NSA and highly influential in the cybersecurity industry, was added by Amazon to its board of directors.
The cloud market for homeland security is considered particularly lucrative by companies, although the exact amount of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' spending – however billion-dollar – is unknown.
WHAT THE NSA CONTRACT CONSISTS OF
The NSA offered few details about the content of the contract, evidently of a sensitive nature. A spokesperson for the agency spoke of generic "cloud computing support services", refusing to elaborate further.
According to information gathered by the Washington Post , the code name of the contract is "WildandStormy" (translates to "Dark and Stormy").
THE MICROSOFT STATEMENT
A Microsoft spokesperson told the newspaper that the company is protesting the NSA's decision, "exercising our legal rights and we will do so accurately and responsibly."
POSSIBLE DISPUTES
The NSA's decision to outsource the cloud contract to a single, large corporation could lead to litigation and antitrust investigations to investigate competitive abuses. It is not excluded that “WildandStormy”, given the similarities, could suffer the same fate as the Pentagon's JEDI contract.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/microsoft-amazon-contratto-cloud-nsa/ on Fri, 13 Aug 2021 07:32:14 +0000.