Amazon has sought ‘preliminary injunction’ from the court to temporarily block Microsoft from starting work, on $10 billion cloud contract from the Pentagon.
According to a CNN Business report citing a court filing, retail giant’s Cloud arm will seek a preliminary injunction to “prevent the issuance of substantive task orders under the contract”. Amazon’s request will be submitted by Jan. 24.
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Microsoft is set to begin its work on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud contract from February 11.
“DoD’s substantial and pervasive errors are hard to understand and impossible to assess separate and apart from the President’s repeatedly expressed determination to, in the words of the President himself, ‘screw Amazon.’ Basic justice requires re-evaluation of the proposal and a new award decision,” read the court filing.
Amazon last year filed a suit with the US Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision.
The e-commerce giant has blamed US President Donald Trump abused his position to put “improper pressure” on decision-makers for personal gains and show his hatred towards Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who owns The Washington Post.
However, the Department of Defense Secretary Mark Esper rejected any suggestion of bias and said that the decision was conducted freely and fairly, without any outside influence.
The JEDI contract is part of digital modernization of the Pentagon meant to make it more technologically agile. More importantly, the goal of JEDI is to give the military better access to data and the cloud from battlefields and other far-fetched locations.
(With input from agencies)
