The company is advancing toward the certification needed to host the government’s most sensitive, classified information as it expands cloud-computing storage centers through its Azure Government Secret unit.
SAP America, General Dynamics Corp.’s CSRA unit, Red Hat Inc. and VMware Inc. are among at least nine companies that have coordinated their opposition to the contract beig awarded to a single provider.
The contract has given the agency the opportunity to evaluate which legacy technology systems are worth keeping and whether there are other high-quality products the agency should be using instead.
The annual defense policy bill proposed by House Republicans would temporarily bar the spending of half the money designated for a cloud-based computing contract.
The Oracle-led effort relies on a loose coalition of technology companies also seeking a slice of the Pentagon's cloud-based work, including Microsoft Corp. and IBM.
Lawmakers have asked the Defense Department to justify why the agency is planning to give a single company a multi-year contract for cloud services worth billions of dollars.
The department already has difficulty moving information, particularly to the battlefield, and using multiple clouds would 'exponentially increase the complexity,' a spokesperson said.
