There is immense power in the cloud. It’s a cutesy colloquialism, one that calls to mind spring afternoons or fantastical floating fiefdoms, but it is also one of the great modern misnomers.
All data stored in the cloud is really housed in some else’s computer.
That’s one reason the Pentagon has been so reluctant to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud.
The trade-offs in storing information outside the facilities it’s directly used in is likely fine for most casual or business cases, but it gets a little scary when it comes to the raw data of national security. Which is why the Pentagon is looking to entrust its data to a dedicated, defended cloud, contracted under the unsubtle term Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. On March 13, nonpartisan coalition Open the Government released a report on Amazon and government secrecy, calling into question the contract and the process by which it will be awarded.
Like everything involving JEDI, there’s an extensive backstory. The cloud is essentially infrastructure, storage space that people and businesses pay for that allows them to access the same files from the internet, wherever they may be. That makes it somewhat different than traditional IT contracts, since it’s not exactly software and it’s not exactly hardware and, once adopted, it becomes the kind of thing future software and hardware depends on. That makes the contract itself, designed for a single supplier and an indefinite duration, worth $10 billion from the start.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/2019/03/22/pentagon-cloud-mired-in-opacity-says-transparency-group
In addition to the protests from employees, the bidding process for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract is bogged down by infighting between traditional defense contractors and the big tech companies that threaten to edge them out of a lucrative business opportunity—and the Department of Defense worries that all of the controversy distracts from its objective of obtaining the same basic cloud computing capabilities already available for consumers, which it says are necessary to better protect soldiers’ lives on the battlefield.
