The National Security Agency has awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Amazon Web Services Inc., Nextgov reported today. 

The publication also reported that the decision to grant the deal to AWS has been challenged by Microsoft Corp., the Amazon.com Inc. unit’s top competitor in the cloud market. Microsoft is said to have recently filed a formal protest against the deal with the Government Accountability Office.

“NSA recently awarded a contract for cloud computing services to support the Agency,” an NSA spokesperson told Nextgov. “The unsuccessful offeror has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The Agency will respond to the protest in accordance with appropriate federal regulations.”

“Based on the decision we are filing an administrative protest via the Government Accountability Office,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. ”We are exercising our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly.”

There is little publicly available information about the contract itself, which is said to code-named “WildandStormy.” But today’s report states that the contract “appears to be part of the NSA’s attempt to modernize its primary classified data repository.”

That classified data repository is known as the Intelligence Community GovCloud, it was reported in 2018. The platform is described as being a “big data fusion environment” into which the agency aggregates much of the intelligence information it collects. According to a 2020 report that appeared in FedScoop, Intelligence Community GovCloud ran on-premises as of last year. 

The 2020 FedScoop reported indicated that the NSA was looking to modernize Intelligence Community GovCloud using “hardware as a service and ‘bulk-priced’ cloud computing” solutions.” The modernization effort is reportedly called the Hybrid Cloud Initiative.

Today’s report that AWS has landed a $10 billion deal with the NSA represents a major achievement for the cloud giant. It’s one of several recent high-profile wins for the Amazon unit that involve federal government cloud contracts.

Previously, the Defense Department announced that it’s scrapping its JEDI cloud computing contract in favor of a new procurement program known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. JEDI, which would have been worth up to $10 billion over 10 years, was won by Microsoft. In contrast, the new Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability program will see the Defense Department solicit bids from not only Microsoft but also AWS and potentially other cloud providers as well. 

Earlier, the Central Intelligence Agency awarded a cloud computing contract known as Commercial Cloud Enterprise to AWS, Microsoft, Google LLC, Oracle Corp. and IBM Corp. A 2019 report published ahead of the announcement of the winners suggested that the CIA was expecting to spend up to tens of billions of dollars on the contract. 

Photo: Wikipedia