Oracle to keep up fight on JEDI cloud bid

Bloomberg

Oracle Corp. will continue to fight the terms of the Pentagon’s $10 billion winner-take-all cloud computing contract after being kicked out of the bidding process this month, according to the company’s chief lobbyist.
Oracle Executive Vice President Kenneth Glueck, who leads the company’s Washington policy shop, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the company will continue to challenge requirements for the project known as JEDI in a lawsuit before the US Court of Federal Claims and in conversations with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“You read the RFP and it just screams Amazon,” Glueck said, referring to the Defense Department’s request for proposals. “The RFP emphasises all the things Amazon is very good at” and “completely de-emphasises the things they’re not very good at.”
The renewed push by Oracle comes two weeks after the Pentagon announced it eliminated the company and International Business Machines Corp. from the bidding because they didn’t meet the minimum criteria, leaving Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the last remaining competitors. Oracle’s moves are also taking place as a leadership transition is underway at the Defense Digital Service, which developed the cloud project.
A Defense Department spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation. In letters to leaders of the congressional Appropriations and Armed Services committees, Glueck said that the Pentagon “arbitrarily restric-
ted competition” by creating overly narrow “gating criteria.” Those are a set of standards the Pentagon used to determine which companies’ bids would be fully evaluated.
“We respectfully request that your Committee exercise its oversight authority regarding the JEDI procurement,” Glueck wrote in the letter.
“We believe that a full and fair consideration of four competing JEDI proposals is in the best interests of the warfighter, the taxpayer, and United States.”