Oracle, IBM out, AWS, Microsoft in to compete for Pentagon $10 billion cloud computing contract

Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp have been selected to continue competing for Pentagon cloud computing services as part of a contract that could be worth some $10 billion, the U.S. Department of Defense said on Wednesday.

“I can confirm that AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft are the companies that met the minimum requirements outlined in the RFP (Request for Proposals),” department spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in a statement.

The selection leaves Oracle Corp and IBM Corp out of the competition for the contract for the Defense Department’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, or JEDI.

The contract is part of a broad modernization of Pentagon information technology systems. The Pentagon said in its request for bidders last year that the contract for cloud computing services could be worth as much as $10 billion over a 10-year period.

Amazon Web Services, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle were considered frontrunners for the contract, according to industry executives. AWS at the time was the only company approved by the government to handle secret and top secret data.