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
