Amazon files official JEDI contract complaint

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Did politics play a role in Microsoft being awarded the $10bn contract?

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Amazon has filed a lawsuit in federal US court contesting the US Defense Department's decision last month to award the $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to its cloud computing rival Microsoft.

According to a spokesperson from AWS, the complaint and supplemental motion for discovery were filed in the US Court of Federal Claims under seal. However, Amazon did not explain the basis for its complaint.

In a court document seeking a protective order, Amazon explained that the filings contain “proprietary information, trade secrets and confidential financial information” which have the potential to “cause either party severe competitive harm”. The company also said that “the record in this bid protest likely will contain similarly sensitive information”.

Potential bias

Suggestions of bias in the Pentagon's decision to award Microsoft the $10bn JEDI contract were rejected by US Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week when Amazon announced its plans to challenge the decision.

For quite some time, Amazon was believed to be the favorite to win the JEDI contract after IBM, Oracle and even Google dropped out of the bidding process. The e-commerce giant's cloud computing division AWS was the most likely to win the lucrative contract which is why Microsoft being awarded it came as such a surprise.

However, Amazon believes that politics got in the way of a fair bidding process as the company's CEO Jeff Bezos has been an outspoken critic of President Trump. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the other hand, believes that staying out of politics played a big part in helping it win the Pentagon's cloud computing contract.

With $10bn on the line over ten years, it comes as no surprise that Amazon would try to appeal the Defense Department's decision just as Oracle did when it filed a lawsuit earlier this year saying the contract favored a single cloud vendor.

Via Reuters

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Anthony Spadafora
Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.