DOD seeks a quick end to Oracle's JEDI appeal

Microsoft won the Pentagon's $10 billion, 10-year single award cloud deal in October, but tech giant Oracle, which bid on the case, still has a lawsuit on appeal alleging that the Defense Department skewed the acquisition requirements to favor Amazon Web Services.

Justice Department attorneys acting on behalf of DOD wrote in a Dec. 23 court filing in the appeal that the outcome of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure procurement should settle the matter.

"Microsoft winning the JEDI contract has mooted Oracle's allegations that AWS obtained an unfair competitive advantage in the competition by hiring former government employees," the government attorneys stated.

The government wants the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to uphold the decision made by the trial judge rejecting Oracle's claim that it was unfairly prejudiced by actions of DOD contracting officials with ties to AWS.

AWS filed its own brief on Dec. 26 focusing on the conflict of interest aspects of the case, arguing that Oracle lacks standing to bring its case, that an internal review at DOD determined there was no conflict of interest in the procurement, and that judgement was backed up by the trial judge when Oracle sued.

AWS is now pursuing its own bid protest case in the Court of Federal Claims, disputing the award of the JEDI contact to Microsoft, arguing that personal and public interference by President Donald Trump influenced the outcome of the procurement. According to a recent filing, the administrative record in that case tops 180,000 pages and totals almost 300 gigabytes of data.