Google, AWS win $1.2 billion Israel tender for cloud services

Tech giants Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud services arm of Amazon, have been chosen as the winners of a NIS 4 billion tender ($1.2 billion) to provide cloud-based regional data services to Israel, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The two tech giants won against Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. All of the multinationals had offered their services to build data centers and provide cloud services to local public entities, with all of the data secured within the borders of Israel under strict security guidelines.

The cloud project, called the Nimbus, is one of Israel’s biggest information technology projects. It will enable government ministries and other public entities to transfer servers and services into the cloud that will be set up by the winning firms.

The Nimbus project is divided into four parts with four separate tenders: to provide cloud services to the government on a public platform – won by Google and AWS; to help set out a government strategy to move operations to the cloud; to provide technical help in implementing the move; and an as-yet unpublished one to provide optimization services for use of the cloud.

Consultants KPMG are the winners of the second tender, and will help set up a Cloud Center of Excellence, which will help set out government strategy to move activities to the cloud. They contended against Ernst & Young, McKinsey and HPE, the ministry statement said.

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The ministry added that a tender to choose dozens of local small and medium-sized suppliers to help the government entities move systems to the cloud and to develop cloud-based systems is underway. The fourth tender is still being formulated, the ministry said.