Dana Deasy, chief information officer at the Department of Defense and a 2019 Wash100 winner, expects DoD and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to commence the initial deployment of a department-wide cloud computing infrastructure in February, Defense News reported Tuesday.
He made the statement as DoD faces a legal complaint from Amazon‘s (Nasdaq: AMZN) cloud business, which alleges that the Pentagon’s source selection process and award decision on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program were influenced by political factors.
Deasy told Defense News in an interview that the department practiced “due diligence” and “deep consideration” when it created the request for proposals.
The department is preparing to implement an unclassified cloud environment as part of the $10B JEDI contract awarded to Microsoft in October and looking to adopt a classified version of the platform six months after the first wave of JEDI rollout.
“I’ve told the team, ‘Let’s just not sit and wait. Let’s start to get the environment ready so when we come out of the protest, we haven’t lost any momentum,” Deasy said.
Nextgov reported Microsoft and DoD plan to discuss contract implementation efforts during a three-day meeting that will occur through Friday.
The report noted attendees will include Deasy, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other company executives.
