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              Congressional
           *.Research Service
 ~          ~~ i~nforming the legislative d bate since 1914___________________




 Amazon Protest of the Department of

 Defense's JEDI Cloud Contract Award to

 Microsoft



 Updated   November 22, 2019
 In September 2017, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum calling for the adoption of a
 Department of Defense (DOD) enterprise-wide cloud services solution. As part of its ongoing technology
 modernization efforts, DOD sought to acquire a commercial cloud services solution known as the Joint
 Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud.
 In April 2019, DOD selected Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (henceforth Amazon) to contend for
the contract award from qualified proposals submitted by IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. In
October 2019, DOD announced it had awarded the JEDI contract to Microsoft. The contract award
process was contentious, attracting significant industry and congressional interest. Oracle filed pre-award
bid protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and U.S. Court of Federal Claims
(COFC). GAO  and COFC  ruled against Oracle; however, Oracle is in the process of appealing the COFC
decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In November 2019, Amazon filed a post-award bid protest with COFC, alleging potentially improper
political influence in DOD's award decision and clear deficiencies in the contract evaluation process.
Many  observers trace Amazon's accusation of political influence in part to President Donald Trump's
July 2019 remarks that his Administration would take a very strong look at the JEDI Cloud acquisition
process. While Amazon was expected by some analysts to win the JEDI contract, due in part to its
extensive data center infrastructure and compliance with DOD cloud security requirements for hosting
classified information, other analysts have speculated that Microsoft prevailed over Amazon based on
offering a lower-priced solution, as well as the company's existing business relationships with the
Department.

The   JEDI  Source   Selection   Process

In August 2019, separate from the source selection process, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper indicated
that he would review the JEDI Cloud program. In October 2019, Esper recused himself from further


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