Pentagon reconsiders Microsoft contract after Amazon protest

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon is reconsidering its awarding of a major cloud computing contract to Microsoft after rival tech giant Amazon protested what it called a flawed bidding process.

U.S. government lawyers said in a court filing this week that Defense Department “wishes to reconsider its award decision” and take ar look at how it evaluated technical aspects of companies’ proposals to run $10 billion computing project.

filing doesn’t dress Amazon’s broer argument that bidding was improperly influenced by President Donald Trump’s dislike of Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos. Bezos owns Washington Post, a news outlet that Trump has often clashed with.

Amazon Web Services is a market leer in providing cloud computing services and h long been considered a leing candidate to run Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, kwn as JEDI. project will store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing U.S. military to improve communications with soldiers on battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

Amazon sued Pentagon after Microsoft won contract in October. Work on project has been halted as lawsuit proceeds.

judge who is presiding over bid protest in U.S. Court of Federal Claims said earlier this month that Amazon’s challenge likely h merit on some technical grounds involving pricing.

Pentagon is asking her for 120 days to reconsider “certain aspects” of its decision. Amazon said in a statement it is pleased government is taking correction action if it “fully insulates re-evaluation from political influence and corrects many issues affecting initial flawed award.”

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said one possible outcome is that Pentagon could end up splitting award between Microsoft and Amazon, or with or vendors. That would move project forward and get it out of courts, he said.