The Pentagon has reaffirmed its decision to award the potential $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract to Microsoft [MSFT] over Amazon Web Services
[AMZN], the department said Friday.
The announcement arrives following a court-ordered review period where DoD was required to assess technical aspects of the contract and allow both companies to re-bid for the work.
“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,” DoD said in a statement.
Amazon Web Services said Friday it plans to continue its protest of JEDI, adding it believes the Pentagon did not address “numerous material evaluation errors” in its review and that its latest bid offered a lower cost “by several tens of millions of dollars.”
“Given the DoD did not agree to meaningfully review the many evaluation flaws outlined in our protest, we said the corrective action was likely to result in another contract award based on politics and improper influence and not based on the relative strengths of the two offerings. That is exactly where we find ourselves today, with the DoD’s re-evaluation nothing more than an attempt to validate a flawed, biased, and politically corrupted decision,” Amazon Web Services wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft originally beat out AWS for the JEDI cloud contract last October, following a series of program delays, allegations of conflict of interest, pre-award protests and congressional and industry pushback over the Pentagon’s decision to go with a single-award approach.
“We appreciate that after careful review, the DoD confirmed that we offered the right technology and the best value. We’re ready to get to work and make sure that those who serve our country have access to this much needed technology,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to Defense Daily.
In April, a federal court granted a motion from DoD to remand Amazon’s legal challenge of JEDI, with the department noting at the time that a potential reevaluation could result in a change in the contract winner (Defense Daily, April 17).
Work on JEDI has been paused since mid-February per a federal judge’s order as a result of AWS’ lawsuit.
“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,” the department wrote in its statement.