The Jedi Project (Case Study Sample)

The Jedi Project: A Cloud of controversy Beverly Nasimiyu United States International University (USIU) Course code and Name Instructor’s name Due Date The Jedi Project: A Cloud of controversy Introduction Gathering information together in a cloud has become essential today to be able to unify information together and make it easily accessible. All major companies have been able to successfully move large computing information into the cloud. The US Department of Defense, seeing that they have been left behind has decided to follow suit by creating the JEDI project. The US military has a huge number of semiautonomous weapons and remote sensors that need to be managed well by being stored in a cloud. The JEDI project is formulated to handle this problem (Dunne et al., 2021).   JEDI Project, its Importance, and the problems it was meant to solve The JEDI project also known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure is a project strategy by the Department of Defense in the United States of America to upgrade its information technology structure to be equal or better than the one used in the industry. Their objective is to set up a cloud system that will allow officers, troops, and employees to access and handle data in the same way as they would in a contemporary corporation. This initiative is important because it will make it easier to retrieve vast amounts of data that have been gathered from various sources. It will facilitate the integration of artificial intelligence applications, autonomous weaponry, and sensors into the cloud. The significance of Project JEDI lies in its contribution, to strengthening security and military operations. It includes centralizing access to data and conducting analysis. The initiative will provide global support for Department of Defense (DOD) activities and enable quick decision-making for the employees and soldiers who are on the frontline. The JEDI project is expected to foster advancements in cloud computing within both the government and private sectors aligning with the Pentagon's objective of expanding the implementation of AI systems throughout the military both domestically and overseas. The project will cost upwards of $10 billion through a ten-year contract period. It includes a cloud provider that underscores its importance in modernizing infrastructure and improving communication within the Department of Defense. The main problem that the JEDI project is meant to solve is security concerns surrounding crucial data in the Department of Defense. The troops, employees, officers, and other people on the frontline working in the Department of Defense are involved in handling sensitive issues regarding them and their country that could cause a security concern for the United States if the information gets into the wrong hands. The JEDI project would be able to solve that through the creation of a huge cloud computing technology that would ensure data security and compliance by all parties involved. The JEDI project was also meant to solve the problem of using outdated computing systems by introducing new and improved technology that will ensure efficiency in sharing data across many areas in the Department of Defense. The system used by the Department of Defense dates back to the 70s and 80s and it did not include data sharing which quickly became inconvenient as time went on (Sunyaev et al., 2020). The old system was also decentralized, which led to problems with managing data at an industrial level. The JEDI project aimed to cut all those barriers and modernize the IT infrastructure of the DOD to allow quick decision-making that involves data. The project also aimed at having a worldwide reach of the activities of the military and the use of artificial intelligence across all areas of the department. Management, Organizational, and technological issues raised by the JEDI project There are a few challenges that have emerged with the adoption of the JEDI project that involve the management, organization, and the handling of technology of the project especially in transition to a new system. One of the management challenges is the dilemma of choosing a suitable vendor to spearhead the technology that is required in the project. There were several big companies interested in taking up the project including Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, IBM, and Google. The Department of Defense had to ensure that there was fair competition when it came to awarding the contract. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are much bigger companies than Oracle and IBM, and it seemed better to DOD to award the contract to one of the bigger companies. Google dropped out of the race making the selection easier but Oracle America and IBM filed a protest stating that the solicitation favored Amazon and Microsoft, which raised challenges for Department of Defense for their JEDI project (Bowne, 2023). Another management issue that arose from the project was training and skill development for their staff in handling the new technology. The staff working in the Department of Defense were used to operating old technology and would require training to acquire the necessary skills to handle the new cloud computing system. In order to ensure the project was a success, the JEDI project had to include hiring of new personnel that are well trained to operate the technology proposed. The work of the new personnel was to train the officers of the DOD on how to adapt to the new technology so as to maximize the benefits of the cloud computing system. One of the organizational issues that the JEDI project raise was whether the contract should go to a single cloud computing vendor or the work should be divided between multiple vendors because of how bulky it is. Initially the JEDI project had proposed having a single cloud computing vendor handling over 500 cloud infrastructure that they had before, which were both private and public. These cloud infrastructures were fragmented making it difficult to make decisions quickly. The issue came about when Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft suggested that the Department of Defense should not use a single vendor for the JEDI project and that suggestion was backed by a few experts like Justin Campos, who is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at New York State University. On the other hand, those who were in support of a single vendor taking the JEDI project argued that it would reduce complexity in the IT systems of the military and ease communications. One more organizational issue raised by the JEDI project is the challenges that come with the modernization of the Department of Defense outdated systems to an enterprise model that mirrors the industry today and is more efficient. The switching of the systems to the cloud could cause a national security concern because of a possibility of the DOD having data leaks. Data leaks can happen when there is a misconfiguration issues which is common in cloud services in a complex system like the JEDI project (Alghofaili et al., 2021). There is also the issue of compatibility between the systems when trying to modernize them. The old system that the DOD used from the 80s poses a problem when trying to integrate it to a modern cloud. Finally, we look at the technological issues raised by the JEDI project. The first technological issue raised is that the cloud services that were used were decentralized making it difficult to manage data across multiple departments and location in the Department of Defense. The DOD spent billions of dollars trying to make the systems compatible and less fragmented to fast pace the process of decision making but all in vain. The JEDI project was created to adopt modern technology to fix the issues of slow decision making and make their systems worldwide to support its operations in an efficient way. Another technological issue raised by the JEDI project was the scalability of the cloud services including vendor monitoring, failover mechanisms, and artificial intelligence to keep up with the industry and take commercial advantage of new cloud technologies. The Pentagon Cloud Executive Steering Group described that the process would focus on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). That suggests that the Department of Defense would be focusing on the commercial side of cloud technologies without limiting it to customizations. The DOD will then be able to provide better and cheaper software to fighters that are easier to maintain.                   Should the JEDI Contract be Awarded to a Single Vendor or Multiple Vendors?            The JEDI contract should be awarded to multiple vendors because of the bulk of the work needed to be done to modernize the systems of the Department of Defense. The contract is supposed to be done over 10 years and it is worth $10 billion, which means that it is a net spend of $1 billion every year by the DoD. Although the amount of money is small to big companies like Microsoft and Amazon, the amount of work is still very huge to be executed by just one company. Even Microsoft was favoring to work with other vendors in this job if they were to win the contract.             Awarding the contract to multiple is beneficial because it helps the Department of Defense practice risk mitigation. Risk mitigation is a policy that the DoD could use to reduce the chances of failure when executing the project. In the case study, it was reported that Google dropped out of the race to win the contract because of its company’s policies regarding using artificial intelligence for warfare. That shows that awarding the contract to a single vendor could lead to failure in case the vendor drops out of the contract due to whatever circumstances they could have. In a scenario where multiple vendors have been awarded the contract, in case of issues with one vendor, the other vendors can ensure the continuity of...