In a move that was by and large expected, Amazon, through its AWS business unit, has asked a court to temporarily block Microsoft Corp. from working on a $10 billion Pentagon cloud contract until a lawsuit challenging its validity is resolved.
In a statement released by the company, AWS mentioned that it is “common practice” to apply for stay orders on such contracts. The company further added that it’s “important that the numerous evaluation errors and blatant political interference that impacted the JEDI award decision be reviewed.”
In a bitterly fought bidding war, Microsoft came out as a rather surprise winner, landing the highly valuable $10 billion JEDI contract from Pentagon. Before an official announcement came in, the tech industry and even some government insiders repeatedly mentioned with confidence, that Amazon’s AWS is sure to land the deal. Amazon, at the time of announcement, had made its discontent pretty clear, saying that it was “surprised by this conclusion”.
Amazon had also previously won a similar high profile cloud contract from the Central Intelligence Agency. During the process of acquiring CIA as a customer, the company had earned the highest levels of federal security authorizations.
Amazon filed a lawsuit in November in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging that the U.S. Defense Department failed to fairly judge its bid for the so-called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract because President Donald Trump viewed Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos as his “political enemy.”
The allegations are a result of some of Trump’s own actions. He has been a vocal critic of almost all of Jeff Bezos’ actions and businesses. He has seldom taken to twitter to mention how Amazon takes away revenue outside the U.S. and the amount it pays to the US postal service to deliver its parcels. To top it all, Trump has been vociferously behind Bezos-owned Washington Post for its critical commentary on Trump and his administration.
1 comment
Comments are closed.