Microsoft Unveils Two Secret Data Centers Built for Classified Government Data
Microsoft Unveils Two Secret Data Centers
Built for Classified Government Data
By Frank KonkelAPRIL 17, 2019
05:50 PM ET
Microsoft is building data
centers and expanding security capabilities to compete with Amazon to host
sensitive government data.
Microsoft unveiled two data centers Wednesday designed exclusively
to host the government’s secret classified data.
Microsoft’s announcement is
part of the company’s plan to compete with Amazon—the only company cleared to
host the
CIA and Defense
Department’s secret and top secret classified data—and comes as both companies
compete for a $10 billion military cloud contract called JEDI.
While
Microsoft’s new data centers are operational, the company awaits security
accreditation from the Defense Department before military branches or
intelligence agencies can begin moving secret classified data to the
facilities. But Microsoft is offering a “private preview” for its
existing customers in which they can move unclassified workloads to
the data centers.
Microsoft
did not disclose the location of their data centers, though the company said
they are 500 miles apart from each other. In addition, the company announced
that each of its Azure Government regions—data centers that specifically
support government customers—were granted what is called Impact Level 5, or
IL5, provisional authorization from the Defense Department, meaning they can
host, process and run analytics on the Pentagon’s sensitive unclassified data.
The Government’s Cloud Wars Continue
Microsoft’s
latest moves come as the demand for cloud computing services is at an all-time
high, with the Pentagon alone expected to spend $2 billion on
cloud in the coming year.
Microsoft
will compete head-to-head with Amazon Web Services for the JEDI contract, which
will essentially become the Pentagon’s war cloud, processing, storing and
analyzing swaths of classified military data around the world. The Defense
Department will assess the capabilities of Microsoft and AWS in the coming
weeks, with an award expected by mid-July.
The
government’s increasing reliance on cloud computing has attracted a bevy of
suppliers, pitting longstanding defense contractors like IBM, Oracle and
General Dynamics against newcomers like Google and AWS. Microsoft is both a
longtime government contractor and a growing commercial cloud provider, and its
ubiquitous Office 365 platform has it all but
guaranteed to receive a chunk of the Defense Enterprise Office
Solutions contract, another multibillion-dollar cloud deal.
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