By Debbie Gregory.

Microsoft is partnering with the U.S. Government in the journey to the cloud.

Microsoft officials announced that the company had achieved the required security levels to host secret U.S. military and intelligence data on its cloud computer network, Azure Government.

Azure Government was the first government-only cloud to be awarded Information Impact Level 5 DoD Provisional Authorization by the Defense Information Systems Agency. It delivers a physically isolated cloud that is DoD Impact Level 5-ready for infrastructure, platform, and productivity services serving every branch of the military and the defense agencies the greatest number L5 services in the market.

“We’re taking our public cloud Azure and sending our FedRamp moderate coverage to cover 50 of those services,” said Julia White, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure, referring to cybersecurity framework for cloud hosting for government. “By the end of the calendar year, those 50 services will have FedRamp high certification.”

Azure Government Secret is meant to provide multi-tenant cloud infrastructure and cloud capabilities to U.S. Federal Civilian, Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and U.S. Government partners working within Secret enclaves.

The biggest cloud companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, all have been jockeying for bidding position for the winner-take-all Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract.

Google has dropped out of the race for the Department of Defense’s $10 billion, 10-year cloud contract, citing an inability to meet the security levels required and because they could not be “assured that it would align with our AI Principles,” according to a Google spokesperson.

Whatever company they choose to fill this contract, this is about modernizing their computing infrastructure and their combat forces for a world of the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence and big data analysis, while consolidating some of their older infrastructure.

Google’s abdication leaves Amazon and Microsoft as the two most likely contenders for the JEDI contract.