The US Department of Defence has awarded its $10bn (£7.8bn) cloud computing contract to Microsoft, snubbing Amazon after more than a year of competition.

The online shopping giant had been considered a front-runner for one of the world's most sensitive and coveted military contract, which will last for ten years and cover both administrative and combat operations.

But on Friday night the Pentagon said that “Project Jedi”, which stands for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, would be awarded to the Seattle-based Microsoft, which is one of the “big three” cloud computing firms alongside Amazon and Google.

“This contract will address critical and urgent unmet warfighter requirements for modern cloud infrastructure at all three classification levels delivered out to the tactical edge,” said a spokesman.

The decision puts an end to a bitter feud between Amazon and competing cloud providers, who have accused the US government of intentionally favouring Amazon and stifling competition.

It is also likely to please Donald Trump, who has made Amazon a personal target as part of a feud with its owner, Jeff Bezos, and who recently promised to scrutinise the bidding process “closely” after receiving complaints from “great companies”.

That intervention may provide a pretext for Amazon to challenge the decision, just as rival cloud providers such as Oracle and IBM protested the Pentagon's earlier decision to rely on one single vendor as they were progressively frozen of the process.