As Amazon, Microsoft Sling Words, What’s the Status of JEDI?
The Department of Defense’s cloud computing project has been controversial from the start.
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A little more than a year ago, the Department of Defense dropped both Oracle Cloud and IBM from JEDI consideration. Officials said neither vendor met the proposal’s minimum requirements. (Google Cloud already had exited the proceedings in October 2018, saying JEDI could conflict with its corporate values.) Oracle then went into overdrive in hopes of reversing the DoD’s decision. It filed a federal claims court complaint contending the DoD wrote JEDI to favor AWS and Azure from the start. The company also reached out to politicians with DoD oversight and said AWS was offering jobs to DoD employees to help sway the bidding process. Another prong in its argument lay in JEDI’s single-vendor structure, which Oracle said inherently was unfair and potentially illegal.
Much as Oracle (and even IBM, to a lesser extent) tried, a judge dismissed the company’s federal complaint. In July 2019, Senior Judge Eric Bruggink said Oracle had no grounds for a suit because the company did not meet certain DoD criteria when JEDI bids were due in 2018. Bruggink also dismissed Oracle’s allegations of bias.
“We conclude as well that the contracting officer’s findings that an organizational conflict of interest does not exist and that individual conflicts of interest did not impact the procurement, were not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” the judge wrote.
That decision positioned either AWS or Microsoft Azure to win JEDI. The looming reality of one cloud vendor handling all the DoD’s data raised questions – namely, why would one of the most security-sensitive organizations in the world opt for a single-cloud approach? Why use one provider, when businesses and other entities around the globe were ensuring diversification with hybrid and multicloud strategies? As U.S. lawmakers and some industry analysts pointed out, each cloud platform contains unique and proprietary features – and weaknesses.
Even so, industry observers predicted the contract would go to AWS.
A few months later, in October, the DoD did the widely unexpected: The agency named Microsoft Azure as its JEDI provider. That’s when speculation flew that President Trump had directly influenced the DoD’s choice. Trump had engaged in a public feud with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post; the president condemned Bezos and the Post for critical coverage. When JEDI went to Microsoft, observers predicted AWS would fight the move in court.
(To be clear, not everyone thought AWS would win JEDI. Analysts at Futurum Research, among a few other experts, contended all along that Azure would walk away with the $10 billion deal. Key reasons: Microsoft long has served as a government contractor, and held key security clearances and capabilities that AWS, a relative newcomer, did not, in comparison. However, AWS did have some top-level clearances Microsoft did not.)
As predicted, AWS did protest the JEDI award going to Azure, although that took a while. Even Oracle, the long-punted JEDI candidate, went to federal court before Amazon did. (In a 144-page brief, Oracle in November 2019 asked the judge to order the DoD to restart the JEDI contract as a multiple-vendor bid.) About a week later, AWS went public with its intent to challenge the JEDI decision.
“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 early December, Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, told CNBC that an “apples-to-apples comparison of the platforms doesn’t come out [to] the same spot this procurement did. Most of our customers tell us we’re about a couple years ahead of anybody else with regard to functionality and maturity. There was significant political interference here.”
By January 2020, JEDI had fallen more than a year behind its targeted start date. Blame lay with protracted decision-making and the mess of lawsuits. Nonetheless, Microsoft was planning to begin work on certain aspects of JEDI. It even secured what The Washington Post called an “obscure” DoD IT certification to allow it to store classified data in the cloud. The certification was slated to last for three months, with the government set to consider a longer accreditation after the initial period ended. Prior to these developments, only AWS held that credential — and remained the sole cloud provider that could store data in the cloud at the top-secret level, according to the Post. Throughout the end of January and into February, AWS pressured federal judges to stop Microsoft’s work on JEDI. AWS even tried to force President Trump to testify about his alleged involvement in the JEDI decision.
Just when Microsoft was slated to get going on JEDI, a judge sided with AWS and halted work on the project. Both Microsoft and the DoD expressed frustration in the change.
“While we are disappointed with the additional delay, we believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC. “We have confidence in the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft.”
Similarly, DoD officials castigated AWS for “unnecessarily” delaying the implementation of the agency’s “modernization strategy” and depriving troops of urgently needed capabilities.
“We are confident in our award of the JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft and remain focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible,” DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Robert Carver told CNBC.
In March, the world got some insight into federal judge Patricia E. Campbell’s rationale for the JEDI work stoppage. She agreed with AWS that Microsoft’s bid contained a “host of errors.” The judge said AWS “likely is correct” in asserting that Microsoft’s proposed storage platform for JEDI did not comply with standards because it does not facilitate online and replicated storage. The DoD should have dinged Microsoft for that oversight, the judge noted.
“The court considers it likely that [AWS’] chances of receiving the award would have increased absent defendant’s evaluation error,” Campbell wrote, per FedScoop.
Since then, JEDI has mostly lain fallow. The DoD asked for 120 days to “reconsider” some of its criteria for the contract. As officials have tackled that issue in the background, Microsoft and AWS have continued their war of words. Further, AWS filed a non-public complaint with the federal courts, the contents of which remain unknown. Microsoft called it a stall tactic and said AWS deserved to lose because it bid too high.
“Amazon is at it again, trying to grind this process to a halt, keeping vital technology from the men and women in uniform – the very people Amazon says it supports,” Frank X. Shaw – corporate vice president, communications at Microsoft, wrote in a May 7 blog.
Drew Herdener, vice president worldwide communications at Amazon, shot back the next day.
“We won’t back down on this front regardless of whether Microsoft chooses to try to bully its way to an unjust victory,” he wrote.
The DoD says it needs until Aug. 17, 2020, to make a new decision on the JEDI contract.
Since then, JEDI has mostly lain fallow. The DoD asked for 120 days to “reconsider” some of its criteria for the contract. As officials have tackled that issue in the background, Microsoft and AWS have continued their war of words. Further, AWS filed a non-public complaint with the federal courts, the contents of which remain unknown. Microsoft called it a stall tactic and said AWS deserved to lose because it bid too high.
“Amazon is at it again, trying to grind this process to a halt, keeping vital technology from the men and women in uniform – the very people Amazon says it supports,” Frank X. Shaw – corporate vice president, communications at Microsoft, wrote in a May 7 blog.
Drew Herdener, vice president worldwide communications at Amazon, shot back the next day.
“We won’t back down on this front regardless of whether Microsoft chooses to try to bully its way to an unjust victory,” he wrote.
The DoD says it needs until Aug. 17, 2020, to make a new decision on the JEDI contract.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project may hold the dubious distinction of being the most contested federal government contract of all time. Worth at least $10 billion, the value of the single-vendor cloud computing contract arguably lies more in the prestige and long-term potential than the money. That’s why Amazon Web Services is duking things out in court against the Department of Defense, which late last year chose Microsoft Azure for the JEDI contract. The project has, since its inception in 2017, been fraught with lawsuits, chaos and word-slinging. And all that’s only ramped up since last October.
Get up to speed on the early movements, and what’s coming next for the JEDI contract, in the slideshow above.
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