Let them fight! The prestigious JEDI project was pretty much the biggest news in cloud last year. Microsoft famously won the $10 billion deal with the Pentagon in October after outdoing other rivals.
Mostly just Amazon, who was not pleased with how the contract was awarded.
Not pleased at all.
Dubbed Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), this is an initiative designed to modernize the critical computer infrastructure of the military via the cloud services of the winning company — which in this case is the Azure platform.
Long story short, the decision never sat well with Amazon, who was long favored to win the project. Strong voices hinted that Pentagon would be using the AWS platform for this initiative. Yet at the final hour, it was announced that Microsoft had nabbed the blockbuster deal.
Amazon declared in November that it would fight the decision, terming several aspects of the JEDI evaluation process being painted with unmistakable bias.
And this fight has now led the firm to ask a court to force a stay of work on Microsoft’s JEDI contract until the court can rule on Amazon’s protest.
An AWS spokesperson to Fast Company:
“It is common practice to stay contract performance while a protest is pending and it’s important that the numerous evaluation errors and blatant political interference that impacted the JEDI award decision be reviewed. AWS is absolutely committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts and to an expeditious legal process that resolves this matter as quickly as possible.”’
Hmm.
Remains to be seen how quickly can this matter be solved, or whether Microsoft will actually be forced to pause work on the project until a final decision is made.
But this much is sure, the fight for JEDI has just begun!
