The Pentagon awarded $9 billion worth of cloud computing contracts to Alphabet Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle on Wednesday. The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) is the multi-cloud successor to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which was an IT modernization project to build a large, common commercial cloud for the Department of Defense. Set to run until 2028, a DoD spokesperson confirmed that the JWCC award is comprised of four separate contracts with a shared ceiling of $9 billion. 

Originally, the Pentagon had awarded the contract to Microsoft back in 2019. However, a legal battle ensued as Amazon, the top player in the cloud infrastructure market, challenged the Pentagon’s decision. Oracle also challenged the Pentagon’s decision in court. Last year (2021), the Pentagon changed course, asking for bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle to address its cloud computing needs. The new contract award is a potential bonanza for the tech companies involved, particularly Oracle, which is a burgeoning player in the cloud computing space.