Microsoft, not Amazon, wins $10 billion contract from the Pentagon

Microsoft got a big win over Amazon to close out the week, but not everyone is going to be happy about it.

The Washington Post reported on Friday night that Microsoft won a $10 billion contract from the Pentagon for cloud computing services that will power data management for the military. It’s a fairly big upset over Amazon, which was expected to land the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (or JEDI) contract.

The two companies had been the finalists since April. 

Amazon Web Services is the leader in cloud computing market share by a country mile and Amazon itself has a higher data certification from the military than Microsoft, per the Post. There has been, and undoubtedly will be more, speculation that President Trump influenced the decision through public comments about it in recent months.

Trump has criticized Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos several times throughout his presidency, even wading into the Pentagon’s bidding process back in July. Amazon could appeal the decision on the grounds that the president possibly tilted the playing field in Microsoft’s favor, but nothing of the sort has happened just yet.

While the decision is sure to be unpopular with Amazon as a corporate entity, that might not be the only thing Microsoft needs to worry about. Tech companies have faced both internal and external protests for working with the Trump administration. Amazon employees protested their company’s ties to ICE last year, for example.

Google went through something similar in 2018 too, with employees protesting its ties to the DoD successfully enough to end the partnership. Last but certainly not least, Microsoft employees have raised concerns over military dealings already in 2019.

Microsoft may have celebrated a corporate victory on Friday, but it’s almost certainly not out of the woods here.