WASHINGTON -- The CIA is taking early steps toward procuring a cloud-computing infrastructure to support its national security mission, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, with plans to award a contract worth "tens of billions" of dollars to more than one cloud provider by 2021.
The cloud effort, known as the C2E Commercial Cloud Enterprise, builds on an earlier $600 million contract that was awarded to Amazon's cloud-computing division in 2013. And it runs parallel to a separate, $10 billion cloud effort being pursued by the Defense Department. Both efforts are meant to outfit U.S. national security agencies with next-generation cloud-computing innovations from Silicon Valley.
The agency's decision to award the contract to more than one company could prove to be a major departure from its past cloud-computing efforts, which have almost exclusively involved Amazon. The C2E contract is likely to become a source of intense competition among the two leading U.S. commercial cloud providers, Amazon and Microsoft. And competitors including IBM, Oracle and Google may see an opportunity to gain market share.
An executive from IBM's federal business unit, which competes with Amazon Web Services, lauded the CIA's decision to turn to more than one cloud provider.
"The world's largest vendors are moving to multi-cloud environments because of their security, flexibility and resilience," the federal unit's general manager, Sam Gordy, said in an email.
Business on 04/03/2019