Timeline for JEDI cloud contract takes shape

The Defense Department's $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure procurement is once again moving ahead.

On April 16, Court of Federal Claims Judge Eric Bruggink lifted a stay on an Oracle lawsuit against the procurement and approved a new timeline for the matter, including a new date for oral arguments.

A week earlier, an internal investigation into conflict of interest charges brought by Oracle against Amazon Web Services found "no adverse impact" on the procurement.  That same day, a DOD spokeswoman  said Microsoft and AWS were the only two companies that met all the requirements listed in the proposal. Oracle and IBM were the other two bidders for the contract.

Oracle and DOD will present oral arguments during the week of July 8 -- exact date still to be determined by the judge -- and the department will not award the potential $10 billion contract before July 19.

A court filing posted April 15 noted that DOD in its investigation also determined that AWS “has no organizational conflict of interest that requires its exclusion from the procurement."

Potential conflicts of interest are not the only issue Oracle has raised in its lawsuit to try and stop JEDI in its current form. The company is also fighting against DOD’s strategy to award the contract to a single vendor, saying that JEDI’s technical requirements were designed to shrink the competition.

This article was first posted on Washington Technology, a sibling site to GCN.