Page 24 - AT

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Tuesday 29 OcTOber 2019
Pentagon hands Microsoft $10B 'war cloud' deal, snubs Amazon

By RACHEL LERMAN cloud computing, and a
AP Technology Writer detailed assessment purely
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — on the comparative offer-
The Pentagon awarded Mi- ings clearly lead to a differ-
crosoft a $10 billion cloud ent conclusion," Amazon
computing contract , spokesman Drew Herdener
snubbing early front-runner said in a statement. "We re-
Amazon, whose competi- main deeply committed to
tive bid drew criticism from continuing to innovate for
President Donald Trump the new digital battlefield
and its business rivals. where security, efficiency,
Bidding for the huge proj- resiliency, and scalability of
ect, known as Joint Enter- resources can be the dif-
prise Defense Infrastructure, ference between success
or JEDI, pitted leading tech and failure."
titans Microsoft, Amazon, According to a July re-
Oracle and IBM against port from the research firm
one another. Gartner, Amazon holds
The giant contract has almost 48% of the market
attracted more atten- for public cloud comput-
tion than most, sparked ing, followed by Microsoft
by speculation early in in second place with close
the process that Amazon to 16%.
would be the sole winner of Over the last year, Micro-
the deal. Tech giants Ora- This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, France. soft has positioned itself as
cle and IBM pushed back Associated Press a friend to the U.S. military.
with their own bids and also President Brad Smith wrote
formally protested the bid- Defense Secretary Mark itary's "disjointed and stove- egy of a multi-vendor, last fall that Microsoft has
ding process last year. Esper recused himself from piped information systems" multi-cloud environment." long supplied technology
Oracle later challenged the controversial bidding with a commercial cloud The latter statement ap- to the military and would
the process in federal process earlier this week, service "that will empower peared designed to ad- continue to do so, despite
court, but lost . citing a conflict of interest the warfighter with data dress previous criticism pushback from employees.
Trump waded into the fray because his son works for and is critical to maintain- about awarding such a Oracle and IBM were elimi-
in July, saying that the ad- one of the companies that ing our military's technolog- large deal to one compa- nated earlier in the pro-
ministration would "take a originally bid. ical advantage." ny. cess, leaving Microsoft and
very long look" at the pro- The JEDI system will store The Pentagon emphasized The deal is a major win for Amazon to battle it out at
cess, saying he had heard and process vast amounts in an announcement that Microsoft's cloud business the end.
complaints. Trump has fre- of classified data, allowing the process was fair and Azure, which has long been Google decided last year
quently expressed his ire the U.S. military to use arti- followed procurement playing catch-up to Ama- not to compete for the con-
for Amazon and founder ficial intelligence to speed guidelines. It noted that zon's market leading Ama- tract, saying it would con-
Jeff Bezos, who also owns up its war planning and over the past two years, it zon Web Services. Micro- flict with its AI ethics prin-
the Washington Post. At the fighting capabilities. has awarded more than soft said it was preparing a ciples. Google employees
time, he said other compa- A cloud strategy docu- $11 billion in ten separate statement. have been especially vo-
nies told him that the con- ment unveiled by the De- cloud-computing con- Amazon said Friday it was cal in protesting the com-
tract "wasn't competitively fense Department last year tracts, and said the JEDI surprised by the decision. pany's involvement with
bid." called for replacing the mil- award "continues our strat- "AWS is the clear leader in government contracts.q

U.S. proposes cutting off funds for Chinese telecom equipment

By TALI ARBEL AP nies financially if they have espionage threat, but has
Technology Writer to do that. Bills in Congress presented no evidence of
U.S. regulators have pro- have proposed setting $700 its equipment being used
posed cutting off funding million to $1 billion aside for for spying by the Chinese
for Chinese equipment in telecom companies to re- government. The company
U.S. telecommunications place their networks. denies that its equipment is
networks, citing security A trade group for small ru- used for such purposes. ZTE
threats. ral wireless carriers has said has also denied that China
The Federal Communica- that it would cost up to $1 uses its products for spying.
tions Commission will vote billion for its dozen compa- A congressional report in
next month on a proposal nies to replace their Huawei 2012 labeled both Chinese
to bar telecom companies and ZTE equipment. It says companies as security risks.
from using government that Huawei has 40 cus- The U.S. government also
subsidies to pay for net- tomers in the U.S. (Huawei is has been pressuring allies
working equipment from also a member of the trade to ban Huawei from their
Huawei and ZTE. The move In this July 30, 2019, file photo a woman walks by a Huawei group, the Rural Wireless networks and has restrict-
mostly affects small, rural retail store in Beijing. Association.) Huawei and ed exports of U.S. technol-
companies, as larger U.S. Associated Press ZTE did not immediately re- ogy to Huawei. Huawei is
wireless companies do not spond to requests for com- the world's biggest sup-
use equipment from those ing the impact of requiring equipment. The govern- ment on the FCC proposal. plier of telecom gear as
Chinese companies. companies to rip out their ment is seeking comments The U.S. government has well as a major cellphone
The agency is also explor- current Huawei and ZTE on how it can help compa- said that Huawei poses an manufacturer.q