While Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) contract with the UK’s three civilian intelligence agencies is already coming under significant domestic scrutiny, the contract – estimated to be valued at between £500m and £1bn over the next decade – is a significant win for AWS because of the nature of the data, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

William Davies, Associate Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “AWS’s UK intelligence deal is another big win for the company, after it successfully sued the US Department of Defense (DoD) into cancelling their Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program – it was decided the Trump administration had shown significant bias to AWS’s largest competitor, Microsoft.”

GlobalData’s report, ‘Cloud Computing in Defense’, lists AWS as a leading company in the cloud sector, which is estimated to be worth $429.4bn by 2024. It notes that the company’s comprehensive provision of services make them a market leader – with competing companies such as Alphabet and Microsoft attempting to make products that can continually compete with AWS in the market.

Davies continues: “The consolidation of confidential data from three agencies is likely to ignite some concerns from observers. However, the servers will be hosted within the UK – assuaging some concerns. AWS already has significant experience in the intelligence sector, having hosted the CIA’s cloud systems since 2013. This contract will likely increase interoperability between the UK’s intelligence agencies, and the stated purpose is to utilize existing data more effectively rather than the collection of more data.

“Further, this contract will cement AWS’s role as a cloud provider for intelligence services, and likely create significantly more contract opportunities for the company in future. While the move is at odds, given the UK’s supposed focus on sovereignty of domestic defense and security production, no UK company could provide the scale and capabilities needed forcing the choice of the US vendor.”