Article snippet: The Pentagon announced Friday that it has awarded its $10 billion "war cloud" computing contract to Microsoft over rival Amazon. The announcement from the Department of Defense (DOD) marked a surprising turn of events — for months, Amazon was viewed as the favorite to win the contract amid an increasingly political lobbying battle. The Pentagon said that awarding Microsoft the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract (JEDI) "continues our strategy of a multi-vendor, multi-cloud environment," adding that "the department’s needs are diverse and cannot be met by any single supplier." "Today, the Department of Defense has taken another step forward in the implementation of our Cloud Strategy with the award of an enterprise general-purpose cloud contract to Microsoft," the Pentagon said in a statement. "This contract will address critical and urgent unmet warfighter requirements for modern cloud infrastructure at all three classification levels delivered out to the tactical edge." The JEDI contract will allow Microsoft to develop cloud-computing infrastructure for the U.S. military for up to 10 years, ending in October 2029, though it begins at only two. The deal could adds at least $10 per share to Microsoft's stock, and bolsters its position in the multi-billion dollar cloud-computing "wars." For months, analysts and experts said Amazon was the obvious front-runner for the highly contested contract because its lucrative cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Servic... Link to the full article to read more