WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said it had canceled a cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 billion.
It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers.
The Pentagon said in a statement that: "With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD's capability gaps."
The statement did not directly mention that the Pentagon faced extended legal challenges by Amazon.
Amazon argued that the Microsoft award was tainted by politics, particularly then-President Donald Trump's antagonism toward Amazon's chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos.
According to the Associated Press, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services will now be offered deals by the Pentagon since they are the only companies the Pentagon has cleared for individual contracts that meet specific needs.
In an interview with reporters Tuesday, Pentagon’s chief information officer, John Sherman, that because of the lengthy legal fight with Amazon, the landscape evolved with new possibilities, so they decided to do away with the JEDI contract and start over, ABC News reported.