A draft document released by Microsoft calls for the use of multiple cloud providers as “the de facto standard for U.S. government infrastructure as a service (IAAs) and platform as a service (PAAS) cloud procurement.”
The Wall Street Journal reported for the first time on Wednesday that the company’s “cloudy vision statement and principles” showed that such a policy would improve competition, reduce costs and promote innovation.
If the government adopts such a policy, it will further open the lucrative public sector market to the cloud technology of Microsoft and other companies, and slow down the development momentum of Amazon Web services.
[kikwell obtained the draft of the document independently. Please read the full text below.]
“What we are worried about is that without clear policies, sufficient support and guidance, and at our own discretion, the U.S. government departments and agencies actually (albeit unintentionally) failed to comply with a number of statutory and regulatory incentives and industry best practices for incentive procurement,” the Microsoft draft document wrote.
The document states that single cloud procurement “should be a rare exception and can only be conducted according to the needs of rationality and prequalification.”
Microsoft is asking other AWS competitors to join its efforts to promote the cloud policy. Oracle is also on board. Google, Microsoft’s longtime rival, promises to take a tougher approach.
One obstacle is that, as drafted by Microsoft, these principles apply to cloud infrastructure and platforms, but not to applications or productivity software.
A study partially funded by Google found that Microsoft accounts for 85% of the productivity software market in the U.S. public sector, which is very similar to Microsoft’s warning of Amazon’s dominant position in cloud infrastructure and platforms, warning people not to “rely too much on a single supplier”.
Google declined to comment when asked about Microsoft’s draft.
AWS is the overall market share leader in infrastructure and platforms, followed by Microsoft azure and Google cloud.
In a high-profile government cloud agreement, Microsoft was initially the only winner of the Pentagon’s $10billion Jedi cloud contract in 2019. Amazon protested that the work was later split into a multi vendor agreement.
Microsoft has not publicly released its multicloud principles. The company is well-known in the industry for publishing principles that describe or update its position on key technology and public policy issues, often seeking to emphasize its own competitive advantage or further open the market it is trying to catch up with.
A Microsoft spokesman said in a statement: “Microsoft has always advocated the cloud approach as a business best practice, and almost all companies have adopted this approach. We also work with other companies and trade associations to encourage the federal government to adopt the same strategy.”
A spokesman for Amazon described Microsoft’s document as a “selfish” movement that would “force customers to use inferior technology” if it was adopted by the federal government.
An Amazon spokesman said, “public sector customers should have the freedom and flexibility to decide how to obtain secure, reliable and cost-effective cloud services and software from one or more suppliers they choose, without licensing or unfair software license restrictions.”.