Amazon to fight Pentagon's JEDI contract award to Microsoft

AWS will claim that the JEDI contract bid process was marred by political considerations

Amazon is to contest Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract award to Microsoft.

The company said it had filed a notice in a US Court of Federal Claims last week indicating its plan to protest against the Pentagon's decision on the $10 billion cloud project.

The company will claim that the bid process was unfair due to political interference.

Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias

According to Reuters, Amazon Web Services' CEO Andy Jassy said in a company meeting that it would be difficult for a US government agency to make a fair decision on the contract when the president appeared to hold a strong grudge against one of the companies bidding for the contract.

"Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias - and it's important that these matters be examined and rectified," an Amazon spokesman told Reuters.

Last month, the Pentagon announced that it was awarding the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (JEDI) contract for cloud computing services to Microsoft.

Since then, analysts and legal experts have widely expected Amazon to challenge the Pentagon's decision, especially after a report last month claiming that President Trump had instructed the Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, to "screw Amazon" out of the contract.

Earlier in August, President Trump said that his administration was reviewing Amazon's bid for the contract following complaints that the specifications of the contract were worded to favour Amazon.

The lucrative contract was originally due to be awarded last year, but was postponed until a series of detailed reviews were completed by then Secretary of Defence Mark Esper.

The JEDI project was started by the Department of Defence in a bid to put together a general-purpose cloud service for the US military.

Amazon was considered the favourite for the JEDI contract before Microsoft emerged as the winner in the final round, between AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Google withdrew from the bidding last year, citing its new ethical guidelines on artificial intelligence.

In April, the Pentagon removed IBM and Oracle from the bidding process, leaving Amazon and Microsoft as the final contenders.

Oracle later filed a complaint in a US federal court, arguing that the bidding process was rigged in favour of Amazon. But, that complaint was dismissed by Senior Judge Eric Bruggink, who ruled that there was no evidence to prove any sort of bias in the procurement process for JEDI contract. The judge also added that Oracle failed to prove a conflict in the procurement process.