Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is integrating its U.S. federal team into the Azure engineering organization led by Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander as part of a reorganization to improve collaboration and better integrate platforms built for federal users into its cloud portfolio, ZDNET reported Wednesday.
Rick Wagner, a 2021 Wash100 Award winner, serves as president of Microsoft’s federal arm, which works with the Department of Defense, NASA and other federal agencies.
In July, DOD decided to drop the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program to end the prolonged court battle over JEDI and announced plans to launch a multicloud contract vehicle.
Microsoft officials said in emails to employees announcing the reorganization that the company learned a lot from the JEDI program.
“Through our direct experience with JEDI and similar initiatives, we know that working with the U.S. federal government requires the ability to deliver highly customized solutions,” Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, wrote in an email Wednesday.
“Our experience has also taught us the tremendous value of bringing our engineering team and our U.S. federal business unit closer together. Doing so allows us to be more responsive to our customers’ distinct needs and make breakthroughs in terms of our product portfolio,” Althoff added.
