Microsoft Corporation has filed a protest against a Department of Defense contract that was awarded to Amazon.
The contract is codenamed ‘WildandStormy’ and is worth close to $US10 billion.
This protest comes after Amazon Web Services challenged a similar DoD contract awarded to Microsoft in 2019, which would also have been worth around $10 billion. AWS claimed the contract was granted to Microsoft for political reasons.
The JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) Microsoft cloud-computing contract was cancelled by the Pentagon, who cited “evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy and industry advances” for its decision to can the contract.
Microsoft now alleges that the NSA did not conduct a thorough evaluation of the key players before awarding the new contract to AWS.
“Based on the decision we are filing an administrative protest via the Government Accountability Office. We are exercising our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“NSA recently awarded a contract for cloud computing services to support the Agency,” an NSA spokesperson confirmed.
The Government Accountability Office will respond to the complaint by October 29.
