CIA Chooses: Amazon or IBM?
The battle between International Business Machines Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. over a $600 million contract to set up a cloud-computing system for the Central Intelligence Agency shows the growing importance of intelligence-agency business for technology companies.
The competition comes amid extraordinary disclosures of secret government-surveillance programs and shows that even in the rarified world of intelligence agencies, companies selling Internet-based cloud-computing services — like Amazon — are challenging the position of traditional technology vendors.