Oracle filed a protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims Dec. 6 against the Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative, or JEDI, cloud contract, the latest opposition in a saga of protests against the single-source contract.
“Oracle filed its protest on JEDI with the Court of Federal Claims. The technology industry is innovating around next-generation cloud at an unprecedented pace and JEDI as currently envisioned virtually assures DoD will be locked into legacy cloud for a decade or more. The single-award approach is contrary to well-established procurement requirements and is out of sync with industry’s multi-cloud strategy, which promotes constant competition, fosters rapid innovation and lowers prices,” said Oracle Senior Vice President Ken Glueck in a statement.
The DoD released its request for proposals on the potentially $10 billion, single-source cloud contract in July 2018, despite industry and congressional criticism that awarding the contract to a single vendor would negatively impact the agency and unfairly limit the pool of potential awardees to just a handful of providers.
Both Oracle and IBM filed protests of the contract with the Government Accountability Office, but the Oracle protest was denied in November.
Now the Federal Claims Court — which predominantly hears cases about money claims founded upon the Constitution, federal statutes, executive regulations or contracts — will be asked to determine the validity of Oracle’s protest.
Federal News Network first reported the Oracle filing.
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
