Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) Secures 10-year CIA Contract for Cloud IT

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has been working to compete with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in the enterprise, and especially in terms of providing cloud IT services for various entities through Amazon Web Services. The latest word is that Amazon is making some headway in pretty big ways to be a viable competitor to Microsoft, which has owned the enterprise space for most of the last two decades.

The most recent salvo fired by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in this burgeoning battle came at the federal level, as Amazon Web Services has secured a 10-year, $600 million cloud IT deal with the federal Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Under the agreement, Amazon is expected to develop a private infrastructure for the CIA to better analyze and evaluate  big data that comes through its servers – amounts of information that the agency has not had much success with effectively and quickly  analyzing through its past cloud platforms.

Neither the CIA nor Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) have commented on the contract – or even to say whether a contract even exists – but reports swirled that a couple of CIA chiefs – CIO Jeanne Tisinger and CTO Gus Hunt specifically mentioned Amazon when they gave separate talks to separate area groups regarding how the CIA is generally looking to upgrade its software and cloud computing infrastructure to meed the higher demands of the current intelligence culture.

It is reported that the CIA worked from several private cloud structures that had specific roles. While the actions involved in the contract are not clear, it seems that the CIA is looking to Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) to developa secure, private cloud for the entire organization that has some of the same structural elements as one would find in a public cloud infrastructure.

What do you think about this deal? Does this contract launch Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) into the IT world as a viable and legitimate competitor to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)? We’d like your thoughts on this in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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