22 May, 2020
Google Cloud wins Department of Defense contract for secure cloud management
Cloud , , ,

James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.

As Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s war of words continues over the JEDI government cloud contract, Google Cloud has secured a separate deal with the Department of Defense (DoD) for cloud management in what will be seen as a major coup for application platform Anthos.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), an arm of the DoD, will build a ‘secure cloud management solution’ running on Anthos. This means services and applications will be run across AWS and Azure – Google announcing full interoperability with the former last month – while being centrally managed through Google Cloud.

Alongside Anthos for hybrid cloud deployment, the product will also utilise service mesh Istio, with Netskope providing security. Google promises better network throughput – up to 500,000 concurrent users and one million endpoints – support for roaming users and better access to managed and unmanaged cloud applications.

“Google Cloud is a pioneer in ‘zero trust’ security and in deploying innovative approaches to protecting and securing networks worldwide,” said Mike Daniels, VP global public sector at Google Cloud. “We’re honoured to partner with DIU on this critical initiative to protect its network from bad actors that pose threats to our national security.”

Meanwhile, AWS and Microsoft have been spending part of this month writing antagonistic blog posts as the fallout from the latter securing the $10 billion JEDI DoD contract has intensified. Microsoft’s stance, following what it described as ‘yet another’ protest from AWS, is that further delay would ‘force American warfighters to wait even longer for the technology they need.’ AWS, meanwhile, warned it would not ‘be quiet and go away’, alleging that political interference ‘blatantly impacted’ the award decision.

According to Axios, the Google Cloud/DIU deal is ‘in the seven figure range.’

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