Amazon To Protest $10B Pentagon Contract Won By Microsoft
Nov 14, 2019, 5:06 PM
FILE (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon is protesting the Pentagon’s decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, citing “unmistakable bias” in the process.
Amazon’s competitive bid for the “war cloud” project drew criticism from President Donald Trump and its business rivals. The project, formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, pitted leading tech titans Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and IBM against one another
In a statement, Amazon said that “numerous aspects” of the bidding process involved “clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias.” It did not elaborate.
Amazon added that “it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon was widely considered the front-runner in the contract competition. Tech giants Oracle and IBM pushed back with their own bids and also formally protested the bidding process last year. Oracle later challenged the process in federal court, but lost.
Trump waded into the fray in July, saying that his administration would “take a very long look” at the process and that he had heard complaints. Trump has frequently expressed his ire for Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. At the time, he said other companies told him that the contract “wasn’t competitively bid.”
Amazon said it filed its protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which deals with financial claims against the federal government.
