Amazon and Microsoft have gotten into a verbal fight over Amazon’s protest of the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI contract, which was awarded to Microsoft last Fall.
The legal protest by Amazon against the JEDI contract was initiated in late 2019 and questioned the fairness of the Department of Defense’s decision not to award the contract. Amazon claimed that President Donald Trump, who has a public acrimonious relationship to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had undue influence on the decision. Amazon also challenged DoD’s acceptance for a Microsoft cloud storage product in its bid procurement process. It claimed that the Microsoft product was not compliant with DoD requirements and unfairly gave Microsoft an advantage over Amazon’s bid.
DoD internal investigations found no evidence supporting the first allegation. Amazon requested that the contract be temporarily halted until further notice by a federal court in February.
The court granted a four-month extension to the DoD in March as it reviewed the storage solutions proposed by the two companies, adjusted the terms under which it solicited them, and “accept limited revisions” from Amazon or Microsoft.
This brings us to this week. Amazon has filed a private complaint directly to the DoD about technical adjustments that the agency intends to make to the JEDI procurement. Drew Herdener from Amazon’s global communications department stated in a blog post that the complaint was filed to obtain clarification from the DoD regarding its revised storage requirements. Herdener said that the direct complaint was received after two weeks of being rejected by DoD.
“As the DoD was defining a new storage requirement, they didn’t clearly define it. We repeated multiple requests for clarification and were not able to get any from the DoD. He wrote that it left them with no choice but to appeal to DoD to clarify the matter. “This could have been avoided if they had responded to any of our multiple requests over the past two weeks. We only wanted clarity on the requirement.
However, Frank X. Shaw (corporate vice president at Microsoft), sharply criticized the move and called Amazon’s complaint “another example Amazon trying to bog Down JEDI with complaints, litigation, and other delays intended to force a do over to save its failed bid.”
Shaw stated that Amazon is “trying stop this process, keeping vital technology away from the men and women wearing uniform — the very people Amazon claims it supports.” “[N]o one forced Amazon into bidding high for the procurement. Amazon made the decision to bid high. However, it now wants to avoid the negative consequences of its bad business decisions. He asked Amazon to “stand down” on its litigation and stop asking for a re-run. Let JEDI proceed.
Amazon’s Herdener reacted by calling Microsoft “self righteous and pontificating”, its actions as a “bully”, and its technology “inferior”.
“Microsoft is doing a lot of posturing. We know why. They have the better offering, but nobody objective and knowledgeable believes so. He wrote that this was further emphasized by their poor operational performance during the COVID-19 crises (and in 2020, YTD). This could be a reference to reports that the Microsoft Azure cloud had capacity problems as a result of the increase in remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft temporarily disabled some Azure features to accommodate the increased cloud demand.
Herdener wrote that “Microsoft wants to us just be quiet and disappear.” “But, as We’ve stated all along, it’s crucial for the DoD, country and future U.S. Government procurings that agencies make de
