Amazon Levels Blame at President Trump for Microsoft Winning $10Bn Pentagon Contract
Amazon filed a legal challenge on the 22nd of November against the award of a lucrative $10 billion to Microsoft from the US Department of Defense. The online retail giant stated that it was concerned about governmental interference in the award of the contract. Amazon’s legal team says that they intend to use two video clips of President Trump discussing the agreement in a public forum as a basis for their claim.
Amazon’s had stated before that they were concerned about political interference in the awarding of the contract. However, the protest that the company filed was done so under seal, making it impossible for the public to view their concerns. Amazon’s cloud computing department, Amazon Web Services (AWS), seemed to be the obvious pick for the contract. However, Microsoft, as a choice for the awardee, has Amazon looking at the criteria for the decision with added scrutiny.
Already a Leader in Enterprise Computing
AWS already holds a significant market share in the cloud computing sphere of influence. Amazon can lay claim to almost half of the global cloud consumers in the world, making them a significant force. Microsoft, holding on to far less of the worldwide cloud computing market, will see the JEDI program as their chance to play catch-up with AWS. The company hopes that the influx of funds from the Department of Defense will help them to develop technology that will give them an advantage over Amazon soon.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, commonly referred to as JEDI, is the system that the US Department of Defense intends to use to create and upgrade its cloud infrastructure system. The aim is to offer secure collaboration between different units and access to data in a way that benefits all departments. The JEDI contract has already come under some scrutiny after Oracle contested the inclusion of Amazon as a potential provider. The complaint was eventually overturned.
