Microsoft’s JEDI Win May Open ‘Floodgates’ For Cloud Growth
- Analysts say size of deal less important than its implications
- Amazon may protest given ‘politically charged’ circumstances
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
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Microsoft Corp. shares jumped to an all-time high on Monday, after the company secured a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud-computing services, beating out Amazon.com Inc., which had recently been seen as the favorite to win.
Analysts wrote that while the dollar-amount of the deal made it “inconsequential” for Microsoft’s near-term results, it still represented a milestone for its fast-growing cloud business. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure award -- or JEDI -- potentially opens the “floodgates” for other government contracts, in the words of Bloomberg Intelligence, even as Amazon is expected to protest.