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January 16, 2020 By cs

Amazon will ask judge to halt work on DoD’s JEDI contract

With less than a month to go before the Pentagon and Microsoft get to work on building the military’s new Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud, Amazon Web Services said Monday that it would ask a court to temporarily block any meaningful work under the controversial contract.

AWS gave notice of its plans as part of a status update its attorneys and the Justice Department filed jointly with the Court of Federal Claims. As part of the company’s bid protest lawsuit, its lawyers have previously said they were considering asking the court for a preliminary injunction, but the latest filing is the first concrete indication of their plans.

DoD has already said it intends to issue Microsoft the first “substantive” task order to begin building the unclassified portions of JEDI by Feb. 11. Because AWS wants to stop the work before then, and because DoD considers the project urgent to national security, lawyers for all three parties have already agreed on an expedited schedule for the court to consider either a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order.

Judge Patricia E. Campbell-Smith would still need to agree to that schedule, but under the proposal, AWS plans to file its formal request to block work on JEDI by Jan. 24. DoD and Amazon would then have a little more than a week to respond with their filings asking the judge to deny it, and the court would issue a final ruling by Feb. 11, the day DoD plans to issue the first task order.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2020/01/amazon-will-ask-judge-to-halt-work-on-dods-jedi-contract/

January 10, 2020 By cs

After 2 years, JEDI is finally underway

The second year of competition for the Pentagon’s controversial cloud contract was as dramatic as the first.

The Pentagon’s high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract is right back where it was one year ago: tied up in litigation.

The circumstances have changed in the past calendar year, with Microsoft winning JEDI in October and former favorite to win the contract, Amazon Web Services, protesting the decision in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

At best, the Defense Department and Microsoft cannot begin work until at least mid-February, putting the Pentagon more than a year behind its initial schedule for JEDI. An internal JEDI strategy document released in November 2017 sought a JEDI award in fourth quarter of 2018 and migrations to the cloud platform by the beginning of 2019.

And yet, what unfolded in 2019 was high drama in the federal contracting world over an improbably high-profile government contract.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/12/after-two-years-jedi-finally-underway/162005/

January 8, 2020 By cs

Time to end Oracle’s long legal fight against JEDI cloud contract, government says

Government attorneys are telling a federal appeals court that it should rule against Oracle in its long-running legal challenge to the Pentagon’s JEDI Cloud contract — partly because some of Oracle’s legal claims are now beside the point.

Oracle is seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that found the Defense Department was on solid legal footing when it structured the multibillion dollar cloud contract. The company claims the Court of Federal Claims made “grave” errors in its ruling, including by brushing aside what Oracle alleges were serious conflicts of interest involving DoD employees and Amazon Web Services.

But in a response the government filed with the appellate court on Dec. 26, attorneys said any alleged improprieties surrounding AWS are now moot because of the Pentagon’s surprise decision in October to pick Microsoft, not Amazon, as the winner of the JEDI contract.

“Indeed, Oracle requested that AWS be eliminated from the JEDI competition, and DoD has effectively granted this relief, albeit for different reasons, by the award to Microsoft,” DoD and Justice Department attorneys wrote in their brief to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. “Accordingly, the court could not presently grant relief that would redress the alleged errors.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2020/01/time-to-end-oracles-long-legal-fight-against-jedi-cloud-contract-government-says/

December 30, 2019 By cs

Federal contracting moves that will ripple beyond 2019

The past year has been long and significant in just about every respect, and government contracting is no exception.

The year was defined by one big, controversial procurement; the ongoing shift to buy more IT products and services through the General Services Administration; that agency’s consolidation of its major contracts on the Multiple Award Schedules; and a new cybersecurity standard that has the defense contracting community holding its breath.

Before 2019 comes to a close, Nextgov spoke with federal contracting experts Chris Cornillie, federal technology market analyst for Bloomberg Government, and analysts at The Pulse of GovCon, a market intelligence firm.

Top of mind for Cornillie was arguably the biggest contract — and upset — of the year. The Defense Department’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract is projected to be worth up to $10 billion over up to 10 years, as a single provider builds a “war cloud” for use across the services.

The Defense Department started the JEDI contract two years ago, a process stretched out further by bid protests and lawsuits. Constant drama surrounded this contract—including a salacious dossier, a last-minute recusal from the secretary of defense and statements from the president—and the award announcement was no exception.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/12/federal-contracting-moves-will-ripple-beyond-2019/162025/

December 24, 2019 By cs

Amazon’s protest of GSA’s e-commerce platform RFP tells us why the silly season is in full swing

There may be no better indicator that the General Services Administration’s e-commerce platform solicitation is facing a host of uphill challenges than the fact that the company many believe will be the ultimate winner filed the first protest.

Federal News Network confirmed that Amazon fired the first salvo in the federal e-commerce war.

Government sources say the Seattle, Washington company submitted an agency-level, pre-award protest in November.

Sources say Amazon challenged whether GSA’s market research was sufficient, and it questioned some of the terms of the solicitation, particularly around the compliance of laws like the Competition-in-Contracting Act, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act and even the provision in the 2018 defense authorization bill requiring GSA to set up an e-commerce marketplace in the first place.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2019/12/amazons-protest-of-gsas-e-commerce-platform-rfp-tells-us-why-the-silly-season-is-in-full-swing/

With less than a month to go before the Pentagon and Microsoft get to work on building the military’s new Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud, Amazon Web Services said Monday that it would ask a court to temporarily block any meaningful work under the controversial contract.

The second year of competition for the Pentagon’s controversial cloud contract was as dramatic as the first.

Government attorneys are telling a federal appeals court that it should rule against Oracle in its long-running legal challenge to the Pentagon’s JEDI Cloud contract — partly because some of Oracle’s legal claims are now beside the point.

The past year has been long and significant in just about every respect, and government contracting is no exception.

There may be no better indicator that the General Services Administration’s e-commerce platform solicitation is facing a host of uphill challenges than the fact that the company many believe will be the ultimate winner filed the first protest.

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