Sun Sep 13 2020
With the lawsuit over the DoD confirms Microsoft will be overseeing the US JEDI project
Microsoft have, once again, been confirmed the winners of the $10 billion JEDI contract by the US Department of Defence.
As we reported back in February, AWS weren’t happy with the DoD’s decision or the tender process as a whole and took them to court in an attempt to have it looked at again.
Whilst the DoD have stated there are still some minor issues to clear up, they’ve released this statement:
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 JEDI Cloud contract is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract that will make a full range of cloud computing services available to the DoD.
While contract performance will not begin immediately due to the Preliminary Injunction Order issued by the Court of Federal Claims on February 13, 2020, DoD is eager to begin delivering this capability to our men and women in uniform.
To which Microsoft added:
We're ready to get to work and make sure that those who serve our country have access to this much needed technology.
Meanwhile however…
It appears as though Amazon Web services remain less than pleased with the ruling.
In a strongly worded blog post they’ve lambasted the tender process as 'flawed, biased, and politically corrupted that creates a dangerous precedent that threatens the integrity of the federal procurement system'.
The post also personally attacks the President, who is rumoured to have stepped in personally to prevent a successful AWS tender bid. Jeff Bezos has long been a vocal opponent of Trump during his tenure as President and their feud is well documented:
There is a recurring pattern to the way President Trump behaves when he's called out for doing something egregious: first he denies doing it, then he looks for ways to push it off to the side, to distract attention from it and delay efforts to investigate it (so people get bored and forget about it). And then he ends up doubling down on the egregious act anyway.
Sun Sep 13 2020