Microsoft beat out Amazon for a Department of Defense contract that could be worth as much as $10 billion over a decade, CNBC reported.

The achievement highlights the emergence of Microsoft’s Azure cloud as a challenger to AWS and represents the latest victory for Satya Nadella, who took over from Steve Ballmer as Microsoft chief in 2014. Early on in the process, Amazon was seen as the favorite, partly because its AWS business won a deal with the CIA in 2013. In addition, Amazon had been certified at the highest existing security clearance level, while Microsoft sought to catch up.

The Department of Defense announced its contract with Microsoft on the U.S. Department of Defense website. Part of that announcement states:

Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, has been awarded a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling value of $10,000,000,000 over a period of 10 years, if all options are exercised. The JEDI Cloud contract will provide enterprise level, commercial Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to support Department of Defense business and mission operations.

JEDI stands for “Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure”. I find the name somewhat amusing, because it makes me think of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – which critics referred to as “Star Wars”.

The New York Times reported that the contract has an outsized importance because it is central to the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize its technology. According to The New York Times, much of the military operates on 1980s and 1990s computer systems, and the Defense Department has spent billions of dollars trying to make them talk to one another.

Microsoft revealed that they have recently seen “significant cyber activity” by a threat group that Microsoft is calling Phosphorus. Microsoft believes Phosphorus originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.

In a 30-day period between August and September, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) observed Phosphorus making more than 27,000 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers and then attack 241 of those accounts. The targeted accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics, and prominent Iranians living outside of Iran.

Microsoft stated that four accounts were compromised as a result of these attempts. The four accounts were not associated with the U.S. presidential campaign or current and former U.S. government officials. Microsoft has notified the customers related to the investigations and threats and has worked as requested with those whose accounts were compromised to secure them.

Microsoft did not say what U.S. presidential campaign was targeted. There are a lot of people currently running a 2020 presidential campaign, so I think it would be incredibly difficult to figure out which one of them was affected by the attempts of Phosphorus.

I would assume that Microsoft would be the most reliable source regarding which presidential campaign may have been affected. Personally, I am very hesitant to trust news articles that reference anonymous “sources” about this sort of thing.

That said, it appears “sources” told Reuters and The New York Times that it was President Trump’s 2020 campaign that was affected. However, The New York Times also reported, that the Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a statement that “we have no indication that any of our campaign infrastructure was targeted.”

Microsoft has introduced a new Outlook on the web. In the past 8 months, Microsoft made improvements to the new Outlook based on submitted feedback and suggestions.

Email is the heart of Outlook and where people spend a significant part of their day. We have designed the new mail experience around you and the people that are important to you – You can personalize your experience, have a little fun, do things faster, and keep those people front and center with new updated features.

Features include:

Categories – Now easier to identify, right from your message list. Categories make it easy to tag, find, or organize your messages. Add multiple categories to a message, ad a category as a favorite, or use Search to find it.

Dark Mode – Personalize your inbox with dark mode for those time when your eyes are a little tired. You can “turn on the lights” when you want to read a specific email or when composing one.

Expressions – Microsoft now allows you to add emojis and GIFs to your messages from Outlook.

Favorites – You can favorite a contact, a group, or a category so you have easier access and can see the message count for each. Once you favorite them, they sync to Outlook mobile, too.

Time Management – Microsoft recently announced new features in Outlook to help you save time with intelligent technology. Meeting Insights gives you relevant information so you can quickly prepare for your meeting. Suggested Replies let you quickly pick from a few options and send an email. One suggested option is “schedule a meeting”, which helps you book meetings faster.

The new Outlook experience will start in late July. Your ability to see it appears to depend on whether or not your organization has blocked the opt-in toggle. The Outlook update is clearly designed for business needs.

Those who use email mostly to communicate with friends and family do not need it. Some of these new features for Outlook have already been introduced in Gmail and other services.