Federal judge rules Pentagon can move forward with purchase of ‘war cloud’ over Oracle’s objections News
(C) Wikimedia Commons (David B. Gleason)
Federal judge rules Pentagon can move forward with purchase of ‘war cloud’ over Oracle’s objections

Court of Federal Claims Senior Judge Eric Bruggink granted cross-motions for summary judgment on Friday to allow the Pentagon to move forward with its new purchase of a “War Cloud” from a major cloud services provider.

Oracle has long accused the Pentagon of bias and conflicts of interest in the design of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Bid (JEDI). The JEDI is supposed to provide the ability for the Pentagon to create a secure “war cloud.” The “war cloud,” similar to conventional public clouds like Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services, will allow the Pentagon to securely share information to military and defense personnel across the world. The “war cloud” will also allow the Pentagon to improve its own infrastructure with new technologies like artificial intelligence.

Oracle initially filed a protest with the General Accounting Office. Oracle claimed that the Department of Defense was designing this bid to favor large cloud providers and specifically Amazon. After two separate investigations, the Department of Defense found no evidence of conflicts of interest. The Court of Federal Claims heard oral argument last week, but ultimately agreed with the government. The judge specifically wrote in his order:

We conclude as well that the contracting officer’s findings that an organizational conflict of interest does not exist and that individual conflicts of interest did not impact the procurement were not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.

The order was filed on Friday, but final judgment has been deferred until the court issues its supporting opinion.