Microsoft Corp. is showing off its government cloud credentials as the deadline to tender a bid for a key Department of Defense cloud computing contract draws near.

Whoever lands the controversial Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract will provide cloud computing infrastructure and other services to the U.S. military for the next 10 years. The highly lucrative contract, said to be worth up to $10 billion, has attracted the interest of the biggest cloud companies, including Amazon Web Services Inc., Google LLC, IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp.

Those companies, along with Microsoft, have been jockeying hard to land the contract, which the DoD plans to award to a single bidder. However, Google this week said it was dropping out of the race, citing ethical concerns over the use of its artificial intelligence technology, which would likely have been a key component of the services it would have to provide if it won the contract.

Google also said it didn’t yet possess some of the required government certifications needed to land the contract, and analysts said it was unlikely the company would be able to obtain these in time.

But these certifications are not a problem as far as Microsoft is concerned. Today, the company said in a blog post that it’s “on track” to achieve the Defense Information Systems Agency Impact Level 6 certification, which lets it handle top secret classified data, by the first quarter of next year. It’s an essential certification for any company that hopes to land the Pentagon’s contract.

Microsoft previously announced an expanded Azure Government Secret service for handling-top secret data in October, but didn’t provide any time frame for when that service might become available. Azure Government Secret is designed to provide multitenant cloud infrastructure for U.S. government agencies working with classified data.

Microsoft Vice President Julia White wrote in the blog post that the company will also expand Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program coverage to the Azure public cloud by the end of this year. In addition, it will make its Azure Data Box family of migration appliances, which rival AWS’ Snowball appliances, to government customers, White said.

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