Amazon.com Inc has given notice that it plans to file a lawsuit challenging the US Department of Defense’s decision to award Microsoft Corp a cloud-computing contract valued at as much as US$10 billion over a decade.
The e-commerce giant plans to lodge its complaint against the contract in the US Court of Federal Claims, Seattle-based Amazon confirmed.
A representative for the department said the agency would not speculate on potential litigation.
Oracle Corp is also mounting a legal challenge to the contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). It is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud-computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems.
Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement that the procurement was tainted by bias and evaluation deficiencies.
“It’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively, and in a manner that is free from political influence,” he said. “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”
The department is grappling with dueling allegations that political interference might have helped or hurt Amazon’s chances of winning the contract.
Some lawmakers have questioned whether US President Donald Trump unfairly intervened in the process against Amazon. Trump has long been at odds with Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
Trump surprised the industry earlier this year when he openly questioned whether the contract was being competitively bid, citing complaints from Microsoft, Oracle Corp and International Business Machines (IBM) Corp.
A book by Guy Snodgrass, a speechwriter for former US secretary of defense James Mattis, alleges that Trump, in the summer of last year, told Mattis to “screw Amazon” and lock it out of the bid.
Mattis did not do what Trump asked, Snodgrass wrote.
Mattis has criticized the book.
US Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said during his confirmation hearing late last month that, to the best of his knowledge, no one from the White House reached out to any members of the JEDI selection team.
Meanwhile, Oracle has alleged in court that former Pentagon employees with ties to Amazon might have structured the deal to favor Amazon.
Oracle is appealing a July ruling from the US Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge to the contract. Amazon offered at least two former Pentagon officials jobs while they were working on the procurement, the lawsuit alleged.
The department last month awarded the contract to Microsoft, an upset victory for a company initially viewed as a distant second to Amazon in the market for cloud-computing services.
Amazon was also seen as the favorite for the deal because it won a lucrative contract from the CIA and had obtained higher levels of federal security authorizations.
Oracle and IBM waged a fierce lobbying and legal campaign over the decision to choose just one provider for JEDI, arguing it would imperil data and stifle innovation. Both companies were later eliminated from the competition.
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