UPDATE: What public CEOs are saying about JEDI

Government IT companies are contemplating the implications of Microsoft's JEDI win over Amazon Web Services and also giving their thoughts to Wall Street.

UPDATE: This story was updated Nov. 14 to include comments from Perspecta CEO Mac Curtis.

Microsoft’s win of the Defense Department’s big-ticket JEDI cloud computing infrastructure contract over Amazon Web Services will continue to have effects beyond just those two companies and others who were interested.

Many government IT firms reported quarterly earnings this week and were asked by analysts about their position in the cloud services market in the wake of JEDI’s award. Here is what their chief executives said ordered by date.

Keep in mind that most systems integrators get a majority of revenue from contracts with defense agencies and have partnerships with the likes of Microsoft and AWS to help federal customers use commercial cloud infrastructure. 

Perspecta's Mac Curtis on Nov. 13

"With JEDI, we are agnostic. We have to work with both and we are Microsoft-gold certified.

"They will do what they will do, and we are there to really focus on the mission side, the application, transformation, modernization and architecture to get our customers' applications in the cloud, certainly enabled by the patent and (intellectual property) from Knight Point."

Leidos’ Roger Krone on Oct. 29

“We tend to utilize the cloud as purchased by our customer, so think of our business as cloud transformation or moving applications from legacy to the cloud. And in some contracts, we will contract with AWS, Azure or whomever for cloud services as a pass-through.

“But typically, the actual provisioning of the provider of the cloud is not in our contract. So we tend to do the value-added of converting legacy to cloud.

“That's true really across the board, whether it be in a DOD or in our civil or health business. So we call this sort of digital transformation, and it's one of the largest areas in our pipeline.

“The decision by the Department of Defense to go with Microsoft Azure versus AWS is really immaterial to us. We won't be affected by that decision in any way.”

Unisys’ Peter Altabef on Oct. 29

“It would not have mattered. So our relationships with Microsoft and with AWS are both equally strong. So we don't have a particular horse in that race.”

ManTech International’s Kevin Phillips on Oct. 30

“We are a mission-focused company, and we help our customers migrate to future platforms to help them with their critical aspects.

“We're frankly excited that our customers are moving through environments, and also, that commercial companies are investing in the right level of security, cloud environments that allow our customers to use multiple platforms and the cloud environments.

“It’s going to help a lot from a speed standpoint, from an AI standpoint.”

CACI International’s John Mengucci on Oct. 31

“We've had a longstanding relationship with AWS. We have an almost typically long relationship with the Microsoft folks. Whether we’re talking about AWS cloud or we’re talking about Azure.

“Those are great commodity cloud-based infrastructure frameworks that both DOD and the intelligence community and federal civilian agencies need out there. We have more folks trained on the AWS cloud than most.

“The intelligence community’s cloud is called C2S and by our customers’ measure, not by us, CACI has moved more applications to the cloud than the next five government providers combined. So we enjoy a great past performance of record. Our customers know that as well.

“We have people trained in both Azure which will now be the DOD cloud standard, as well as AWS. We’ll continue to work well with them, both outstanding companies. Both provide outstanding products and we enjoy that integrator’s position, which means that we will continue to be the market leader in moving government applications to the cloud.”

Booz Allen Hamilton’s Horacio Rozanski on Friday

“Cloud adoption is one of the major trends across the federal government, in DOD we expect that to accelerate and I think these contract vehicles are in some way catching up to that demand as opposed to being ahead of it.

“We work closely with all of the major cloud providers because what they do we cannot do, and vice versa, what we do is unique and differentiated and it allows cloud to be deployed into mission in a way that is successful and effective.

“We believe that at least for the medium term, those are the positions in the value chain that we and they will occupy, so we’re bullish.

“You need a robust, modern cloud infrastructure to deploy those kinds of (AI) capabilities, so we see how the strong cloud adoption across the government benefits Booz Allen.”