Amazon may succeed on key argument in Microsoft-JEDI cloud contract lawsuit

Microsoft was awarded with the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract last year. In December, Amazon filed a lawsuit against DoD’s decision. Later, Amazon was seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the issuance of substantive task orders under the JEDI contract. In response to Amazon’s filing, last month a judge ordered a temporary block on the JEDI cloud contract.  As per the contract, Microsoft would have started the contract work on Feb. 11. Because of this new order, Microsoft temporarily stopped all the work related to this contract.

Recently, the opinion provided by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith was unsealed. In the report, Judge has mentioned that Amazon is likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the DoD improperly evaluated Microsoft’s price scenario regarding storage services. Amazon claims that Microsoft’s storage solution scenario assessed by DoD is not technically feasible.

Microsoft downplayed the argument with the below statement.

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. While important, there were six pricing scenarios, each with multiple sub-elements, and eight technical factors, each with numerous subfactors evaluated during the procurement. The decision does not find error in the Department of Defense’s evaluation in any other area of the complex and thorough process that resulted in the award of the contract to Microsoft.

“We have confidence in our technology, our bid, and the professional staff at the Department of Defense,” said Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of communications.

Last month, Amazon filed a petition in court that it wants to depose President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, DoD’s CIO, Dana Deasy and former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Amazon believes that these individuals were instrumental in awarding the JEDI contract to Microsoft.

“President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his position as President and Commander in Chief to interfere with government functions – including federal procurements – to advance his personal agenda. The preservation of public confidence in the nation’s procurement process requires discovery and supplementation of the administrative record, particularly in light of President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon.’ The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends,” Amazon said in a statement

Source: Reuters