Microsoft is signing deals with foreign governments to offer cloud infrastructure packages similar to the bundle it assembled for the U.S. Defense Department, people familiar with the matter said.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud offering for the Defense Department provides cloud-based computing and storage resources at all government security classification levels, as well as devices that can work offline until they sync back with cloud infrastructure. The Pentagon awarded the JEDI contract to Microsoft in October. The contract is worth up to $10 billion over 10 years.
Outside the U.S., Microsoft has seen interest in the type of relationship that it has formed with the Pentagon, said one of the people. Specifically, Microsoft has committed to staffing the DOD initiative with people who hold sufficient government security clearances, and to delivering a group of existing products and services, as opposed to specially built technologies, at a customized price.
Microsoft employees began work on cloud contracts for foreign governments after it became clear that the JEDI work would be put on hold because of a legal challenge from Amazon, Microsoft’s main rival in cloud computing, this person said.
The strategy shows that Microsoft hopes to keep widening its cloud infrastructure business by meeting public sector needs abroad while maintaining a tight collaboration with the Trump administration, which has helped broker a possible acquisition of part of the Chinese-owned social app TikTok.
