The Pentagon is investigating whether Amazon Web Services (AWS) has caused a conflict of interest by hiring a former employee of the Ministry of Defense. That’s what The Hill says. The employee is said to have led the project to bring the computer systems from the Pentagon to the cloud.
Oracle has filed a lawsuit against AWS, which revolves around Deap Ubhi. Ubhi worked in Amazon’s cloud department, then in the U.S. Department of Defense and then returned to Amazon. His career is now the subject of research into the competition for a $10 billion contract to build and maintain the vast majority of the Pentagon’s cloud system.
Oracle argues that AWS had an advantage in bidding on the program, called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). Amazon denies those claims.
The Pentagon previously concluded that Ubhi “had no negative impact to offer integrity on JEDI”, according to the documents in the lawsuit. More a Pentagon contract executive said he was thinking about whether Ubhi had created a conflict of interest by working for Amazon. Rumour has it that Ubhi withdrew from the JEDI programme in October 2017.
Indictment
The Pentagon and AWS state that Oracle’s claim is a broad ‘fishing expedition’. Last year, the company sued the US government for the way in which the tender for the contract had gone through. The company claims that it is contrary to U.S. law to choose only one provider for the contract. Also, it is not in line with the overall strategy within the cloud sector, according to Oracle.
In addition to AWS, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are also taking part in the race for the contract. The contract is expected to be awarded in the spring.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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