Amazon's appeal to challenge the US Department of Defense's decision to award the $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft will likely succeed according to a US judge.
The opinion by US Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith was recently unsealed after she issued an order blocking further work on the contract until Amazon's court challenge is resolved back in February.
While Amazon has claimed that the contract was awarded to its rival Microsoft as a result of US President Donald Trump's influence, Campbell-Smith's opinion did not mention Trump or address Amazon's claims of improper influence. Instead it focused on how the Pentagon assessed Microsoft's data storage in one price scenario out of six.
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According to Campbell-Smith, Amazon is “likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the DoD improperly evaluated” a Microsoft price scenario. She believes that Amazon will be able to show that Microsoft's scenario is not “technically feasible”.
JEDI contract appeal
In a recent statement, Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw explained why he believes that the company will be able to move forward with its work on the JEDI contract, saying:
“The decision disagreed with a lone technical finding by the Department of Defense about data storage under the evaluation of one sub-element of one price scenario. We have confidence in our technology, our bid, and the professional staff at the Department of Defense.
"We believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work. Time matters because those who serve our country urgently need access to this essential modern technology.”
Amazon was initially viewed as the front-runner to win the contract but the company filed a lawsuit in November after it was awarded to Microsoft instead.
The company's lawsuit claims that the Defense Department's decision was full of “egregious errors” which were a result of “improper pressure from President Donald Trump”.
The US President has mocked Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos on multiple occasions and he has also publicly criticized the ecommerce company as well as Bezos' newspaper The Washington Post.
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Via Reuters
