Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has filed a motion in court in an attempt to freeze progress on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project as a legal review to determine the fairness of the contract battle between Amazon and competitor Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).
Amazon's motion is an attempt to halt progress on JEDI related developments while a legal review is underway that will determine if Microsoft's awarding of the contract was free of any external pressures. "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," Amazon said in a statement. Prior to the motion, Amazon had filed with the U.S. Federal Claims Court that there was "unmistakable bias" in the process of awarding the contract. The Pentagon has consistently denied these allegations stating that all offers were "treated fairly".
Amazon's move is not unsurprising considering the allegations surrounding the Pentagon's decision to award the contract to Microsoft. Prior to Microsoft's victory, there was no shortage of animosity between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and President Donald Trump. Publicly the President stated that he had received "tremendous complaints" regarding Amazon, but privately there was allegations that he had directly ordered former Secretary of State James Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the contract.
The gravitas of the JEDI program cannot be understated, and it is entirely understandable that Amazon is taking its complaints as seriously as it is. While not particularly financially lucrative at first glance, the opportunities opened up by the JEDI program are worth more than the initial contract, such as working more closely with the Pentagon and gaining favor with other government agencies who may want to make similar modernization decisions. Also, there is a great deal of reputation at stake for the two giants of the cloud computing industry. The JEDI program stands to completely revolutionize the way the United States Armed Forces handles its data and will completely overhaul its aging computer systems. Such an undertaking will inevitably bring a great deal of attention and a positive reputation boost to whichever company the courts decide to rule in favor of.