Israel recently signed a series of contracts with Amazon Web Services and Google to provide the government with cloud services. It is just the first stage in a vast, multiyear flagship project called Project Nimbus to provide to provide comprehensive cloud services to the government, the security establishment and major players in the Israeli economy.

While the project will require extensive investment in infrastructure, it will eventually advance the development of a local Israeli “ecosystem” in the field of cloud technology.

Amazon and Google won the tender to provide these cloud services, beating out other high-tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. According to the Finance Ministry, the service providers that were chosen slashed their official price by 20%. Eviatar Peretz, the director of government acquisitions in the office of the Accountant General, contends that these are the best prices offered to a government body anywhere in the world. 

The project will include the creation of local cloud server sites in Israel at an estimated initial cost of 4 billion shekels [$1 billion]. Cloud services will be provided by these sites, and the data will be processed and kept within the State of Israel under the strictest security measures, supervised by the relevant government agencies.