Oracle court case around controversial cloud contract shut down

Oracle’s lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense has been temporarily halted. The case, which started with the JEDI cloud contract of 8.8 billion euros (10 billion dollars), has been shut down so that the ministry can look into possible conflicts of interest. It is not yet certain when the investigation into this new evidence will be completed.

The central bone of contention in the lawsuit is the fact that the Pentagon wants to award the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) to only one company. However, according to Oracle, certain employees of the Pentagon are biased against Amazon Web Services (AWS). New evidence would have come to light on this. In order to give the ministry time to examine that material, the trial has now been temporarily halted.

Pentagon-cloud

The Pentagon wants its internal infrastructure to switch to the cloud over the next ten years. It has 8.8 billion euros left over for that, a contract that many of the largest cloud providers are looking for. But according to Oracle, the bidding process favors competitors such as Amazon Web Services. According to Oracle, this is contrary to federal law.

The potential conflict of interest in the award process has already been investigated, but according to SiliconANGLE, new information has been found. This is confirmed by the ministry through spokesman Elissa Smith opposite the site. New information has come to our attention concerning possible conflicts of interest. The Ministry is investigating these possible conflicts.

Two employees

It is not clear what kind of information it is. In its indictment, Oracle claims in any case that two employees of the Ministry have ties with AWS. Oracle’s most serious accusation is directed at employee Deap Ubhi, who has meanwhile apologized for JEDI-related work. He is said to have worked for AWS before and to have expressed a negative opinion about other cloud providers competing for JEDI.

The ministry denies that in all senses of the word. Oracle is throwing out its fishing rod as far as possible, in an attempt to find as much support as possible for its claims. But according to the Ministry, the accusations against Ubhi and also employee Anthony DeMartino are illogical and unfounded. At the same time, however, there is now new information that may relate to these two employees.

Winner-takes-all

Oracle’s biggest problem with JEDI is the fact that the contract will go entirely to one provider. Oracle wants the Pentagon to split up the contract and award it to multiple providers. Companies like Google also support this idea. Otherwise, the contract would violate certain federal rules, as well as best practices within the cloud industry. A multicold strategy is nowadays considered to be the most modern.

The hope of the U.S. Department of Defense is still to award JEDI to a company in the course of April. The question is whether this will be successful, because this case will cause some delay and a decision will only be taken once the trial has been completed. New evidence creates additional delays, which are likely to add to the delay in the award of the contract.