The Defense Department said Wednesday that it had awarded lucrative cloud-computing contracts to four companies: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. The contracts run through 2028 and could be valued as high as $9 billion, the Pentagon said in a news release. The work is for a new cloud architecture called the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, which would provide the Defense Department with cloud services “across all security domains and classification levels.” The decision to award contracts to four companies was a shift for the Pentagon, three years after it had given a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft. That contract, for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, became part of a legal battle over claims that President Donald J. Trump interfered in a process that favored Microsoft over its rival bidder, Amazon. “This is the biggest cloud Beltway deal in history and was a key deal to win for all the software vendors in this multiyear … [Read more...] about Pentagon Divides Big Cloud-Computing Deal Among 4 Firms