Amazon has vowed to continue its protests after the US Department of Defense (DoD) has reaffirmed that Microsoft has won the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, Cloud computing contract.
“The Department has completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI Cloud proposals and determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government,” the DoD said in a statement on Friday.
Amazon’s Cloud computing arm, called Amazon Web Services (AWS), said in a blog post that the DoD’s re-evaluation is “nothing more than an attempt to validate a flawed, biased, and politically corrupted decision.”
After Microsoft was awarded the decade-long contract in October last year, AWS filed a bid protest directly to DoD, challenging the decision.
“Taking corrective action should have provided the DoD an opportunity to address the numerous material evaluation errors outlined in our protest, ensure a fair and level playing field, and ultimately, expedite the conclusion of litigation,” AWS said in a blog post on Friday.
“Unfortunately, the DoD rejected that opportunity,” AWS alleged.
After Amazon protested the original award, Microsoft said that it won the JEDI contract because the US Department of Defense found that it offered “significantly superior” technology at a better price.
“It’s also important to point out that the DoD cited price as a major factor in the previous decision. This time, AWS offered a lower cost by several tens of millions of dollars,” AWS alleged in the latest blog post.
“The DoD’s decision to intentionally ignore the clear cost benefits offered by AWS reinforces the fact that this corrective action was never meant to be fair,” it added.
AWS said that it will “continue pursuing a fair, objective, and impartial review.”
After reaffirming that Microsoft has won the JEDI contract, DoD said that the contract performance will not begin immediately due to the Preliminary Injunction Order issued by the Court of Federal Claims on February 13.
The department, however, added that it is eager to begin delivering the Cloud computing capability to its men and women in uniform.
