Judge Rules in Favor of AWS in CIA Cloud Debacle

IBM (IBM) won a huge battle over Amazon (AMZN) Web Services (AWS) over the summer when it disputed a CIA cloud contract awarded to AWS. Someone at the CIA obviously thought the dispute had some merit, and the intelligence agency clawed back the contract to hand it over to IBM. Now, the US Court of Federal Claims has turned the tables again, reversing the reversed decision (getting confused yet?).

AWS didn't sit idle after IBM managed to win the contract back from the public cloud giant, filing a complaint with the thought the CIA had made the correct decision on its first try. Apparently, the judge agreed.

A couple of interesting facts: Amazon's price was actually higher than Big Blue's quote, but according to the complaint filed by AWS, it had fared better in CIA cloud scoring than IBM. Additionally, AWS noted that in terms of risk, AWS was identified as "low risk" while Big Blue scored the unfortunate "high risk" mark, at least in terms of the proposal for the CIA contract.

So the hot potato that everybody wants to hold is back in the hands of the original contract winner. But apparently that's not complicated enough, as both AWS and IBM have both rebid on the contract. Of course, IBM, annoyed it had its victory snatched away, maintains it has the better product. But for now, it looks as though Amazon has the upper hand.

If you think this is the end of legal actions and thinly veiled insults between AWS and IBM, though, I would think again. It seems unlikely IBM is going sit on its laurels and let the case lie. If anything, I'd say IBM is reloading its cannons and preparing for the next volley.

Stay tuned, as always.