Amazon plans on challenging the Pentagon's decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft on claims the tendering process was flawed.
According to Amazon, the Pentagon's decision last month suffered from "unmistakable bias," amid reports that President Trump may have influenced the process to award the contract to Amazon's rival.
"Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias —and it's important that these matters be examined and rectified," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email on Thursday. To challenge the decision, the company plans on filing a protest at the US Court of Federal Claims.
"We also believe it's critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence," the Amazon's spokesperson added.
Although Amazon is best known for online shopping, the company is also the biggest provider of cloud computing services to enterprises, ahead of Microsoft and Google. (For example, Netflix runs on Amazon's cloud infrastructure.)
It's leading position is a big reason why observers expected Amazon to win the Pentagon's $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, which calls for supplying cloud computing services to the US military for the next decade. But in July President Trump said he was considering intervening in the tendering process, citing complaints from other bidders.
A recently-published biography about former US Defense Secretary James Mattis, who served in the Trump administration, also claims the President directed Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the JEDI contract.
The Defense Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But in awarding the contract to Microsoft, the department said at the time: "All offerors were treated fairly and evaluated consistently with the solicitation's stated evaluation criteria."
Last month, Microsoft responded to the controversy, pointing to the company's 40-year record of supplying proven and secure technologies to the Defense Department. "We brought our best efforts to the rigorous JEDI evaluation process and appreciate that DoD has chosen Microsoft," the company said in a statement at the time.