NSA enters into a $10 billion cloud contract with Amazon

History

2022: NSA renegotiated $10 billion contract with Amazon

At the end of April 2022 US National Security Agency , she re-entered into Amazon Web Services a cloud contract worth $10 billion. The project, codenamed WildandStormy, was originally concluded Amazon with Web Services () AWS in August 2021. Since the deal concerns US national security, all details are unknown. According to information SiliconANGLE, this is part of an attempt by the National Security Agency (NSA) USA to modernize its main secret repository. data The repository itself is a data pooling environment in which the NSA collects most of the intelligence it collects.

The stumbling block for obtaining the AWS contract was October 2021, when the US Government Reporting Office called on the NSA to re-evaluate the proposals submitted from AWS and Microsoft. The revision was related to a protest from Microsoft to award the AWS contract.

NSA enters into a $10 billion cloud contract with Amazon

The NSA re-evaluated the offers from the companies and decided to renegotiate the AWS contract anyway. An NSA spokesman confirmed that AWS had been awarded the contract and that the contract was a continuation of the NSA hybrid computing initiative to upgrade and meet the Agency's robust processing and analytics needs.

This is not the first time AWS has successfully signed a contract with a US government agency. Many U.S. agencies use services provided by commercial cloud platforms. They also include the US Central Intelligence Agency, which simultaneously uses four sites to separate the infrastructure of its Commercial Cloud Enterprise - Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Oracle.

AWS also claims a contract with the US Department of Defense as part of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability procurement program. However, the award of contracts under this program was postponed until December 2022.^[1]

2021: NSA enters into a $10 billion cloud contract with Amazon

In early August 2021, the US National Security Agency signed a contract with Amazon Web Services for the introduction of cloud services in the amount of $10 billion. The decision to conclude a deal with AWS is disputed by Microsoft, Amazon's main competitor in the cloud market. Microsoft filed an official protest against the deal.

The NSA recently signed a contract to provide cloud computing services to support the Agency, a NSA spokesman said. - The unsuccessful offender filed a protest with the Accounts Chamber of the government. The agency will respond to the protest in accordance with the relevant federal decrees.

NSA enters into a $10 billion cloud contract with Amazon

The contract is supposedly codenamed WildandStormy. It is believed that this cloud contract will be an attempt by the NSA to modernize its main secret data warehouse, known as Intelligence Community GovCloud since 2018. This platform is described as a "big data fusion environment" in which the NSA collects most of the intelligence.

According to a report published in FedScoop, in 2020, Intelligence Community GovCloud worked locally. It also states that the NSA intends to modernize the GovCloud using "hardware-as-a-service and cloud computing solutions at wholesale prices."

AWS's $10 billion deal with the NSA represents a major achievement for the cloud company. Earlier, the US Department of Defense announced that it was abandoning the JEDI cloud computing contract, which Microsoft won, in favor of a new procurement program known as Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. Under the new program, the Department of Defense will request applications not only from Microsoft, but also from AWS and possibly other cloud service providers.^[2]

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