Judge sides with Pentagon and Amazon in cloud bidding case

A federal judge is dismissing allegations that bidding for a USD 10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon was rigged to favor Amazon. Friday's ruling dismissing Oracle's claims clears the Defense Department to award the contract to one of two finalists: Amazon or Microsoft.

It will be a boon for whichever company gets to run the 10-year computing project, which the U.S. military sees as vital to maintaining its technological advantage over adversaries and accelerating its use of artificial intelligence in warfare. Oracle and IBM were eliminated during an earlier round, but Oracle persisted with a legal challenge claiming conflicts of interest.

Court of Federal Claims Judge Eric Bruggink said Friday that Oracle can't demonstrate favoritism because it didn't meet the project's bidding requirements to begin with. Bruggink also sided with a Pentagon contracting officer's earlier finding that there were no "organizational conflicts of interest" and no individual conflicts that harmed the bidding.

The Pentagon says it wants to pick a vendor as soon as Aug 23. Formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military's computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities. 

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