Microsoft challenges NSA's decision to award $10bn contract to Amazon
Once again, Amazon and Microsoft are in dispute over a multi-billion dollar cloud contract - but this time, Microsoft is on the attack
The USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has awarded a cloud computing contract worth up to $10 billion to AWS, but Microsoft has challenged the decision.
News of the contract first emerged last month, after Washington Technology Daily reported Microsoft had claimed the NSA did not conduct a ' proper evaluation ' before awarding the multi-billion dollar contract, which is code-named WildandStormy.
Microsoft insists that, had the NSA conducted a proper evaluation, it would not have selected AWS as the winner.
The Windows-maker filed a bid protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on 21st July 2021 - about two weeks after the NSA announced AWS as the winner.
In a statement to Nextgov, Microsoft saidit was exercising its legal rights and ' will do so carefully and responsibly '.
An NSA spokesperson confirmed Microsoft had filed a protest. They said the Agency "will respond to the protest in accordance with appropriate federal regulations".
The GAO is expected to announce a decision by 29th October 2021.
The NSA and the Department of Defense (DoD) have taken many steps to introduce commercial cloud computing capabilities in recent years.
The NSA, which currently uses the on-premises GovCloud as its primary classified data repository, is pursuing a Hybrid Compute Initiative to move its intelligence data to servers operated by a commercial cloud provider.
In November 2020, the CIA awarded its Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) contract to five cloud firms - Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Google and IBM - who now compete with each other for specific task orders.
The contract award for WildandStormy project comes on the heels of a bitter and prolonged dispute over the DoD's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, also worth up to $10 billion.
The DoD awarded the JEDI contract to Microsoft in 2019, but AWS challenged the decision in lawsuits. The DoD eventually went back on its choice last month, and plans to re-tender the contract.
The DoD began the JEDI project as part of a broader digital transformation process for the Pentagon, which will involve a general-purpose cloud service for the US military. Amazon was long seen as the favourite for the deal, until Microsoft emerged as the winner in October 2019.
At the time, Amazon claimed the DoD unfairly prevented it from winning due to political pressure from then-President Trump.
In its lawsuit, the company argued that Trump had influenced the bidding process because of his ongoing dispute with Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and The Washington Post.
Amazon also argued in court that the JEDI tender was undermined by evaluation errors. In response, the DoD stated that it had 'completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI Cloud proposals' and 'determined that Microsoft's proposal continued to represent the best value to the Government'.
The DoD said last month that it was cancelling the contract due to ‘evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances'. The Department also began a new procurement process, open to bidding from multiple companies.