Amazon Web Services [AMZN] has filed a new protest with the Pentagon related the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud competition, this time seeking clarification on adjusted requirements as the Pentagon prepares to reevaluate proposals for the program.
“AWS is committed to ensuring it receives a fair and objective review on an award decision that the [federal] court found to be flawed. AWS repeatedly sought clarity from the DoD around ambiguous aspects of the amended solicitation and the DoD refused to answer our questions. We simply want to ensure a common understanding of the DoD’s requirements and eliminate ambiguity that could impact a fair evaluation,” an AWS spokesperson told
Defense Daily.
The protest follows a federal court’s decision in April remanding AWS’s current legal challenge of JEDI and allowing the Pentagon to review technical aspects of the contracting process and consider revised bids from the program’s finalists, Amazon and Microsoft [MSFT] (Defense Daily, April 17).
Earlier on Tuesday Microsoft, which was awarded the JEDI contract in October, posted a blog stating it had received notice of a new AWS protest field “out of view of the public,” and characterizing it as a “another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.”
“It’s not surprising that Microsoft is trying to posture here, but anybody who’s studied the cloud computing space will tell you that AWS has a much more functional, capable, cost-effective, and operationally strong offering,” the AWS spokesperson said.