Oracle’s bid protest against U.S Defence Department’s(Pentagon) $10 billion cloud contract

On Monday, Oracle Corp filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office(GAO) against Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI(Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) cloud contract. Oracle believes should not be awarded only to a single company but instead, allow for multiple winners.

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The U.S Defence Department unveiled the competition in July and stated that only a single winner, the one with the most rapid adoption of the cloud technology would be awarded.

Deborah Hellinger, Oracle’s spokeswoman, said in a statement on Tuesday, “The technology industry is innovating around next-generation cloud at an unprecedented pace and JEDI virtually assures DoD will be locked into a legacy cloud for a decade or more. The single-award approach is contrary to the industry's multi-cloud strategy, which promotes constant competition, fosters innovation and lowers prices.”

A bid protest is a challenge to the terms of a solicitation or the award of a federal contract. The GAO, which adjudicates and decides these challenges, will issue a ruling on the protest by November 14.

This has been the first bid protest ever since the competition started a decade ago. Amazon.com is being seen as a top contender throughout the deal. Amazon Web Services or AWS is the only company approved by the U.S. government to handle secret and top secret data. Thus, this competition has attracted criticism from companies that fear Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud unit, will win the contract. This would choke out hopes for others (Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Oracle (ORCL.N), IBM (IBM.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google) to win the government cloud computing contract.

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