A federal judge said that she believes that Amazon Web Services is “likely to succeed” with at least some of its court case over a $10 billion military cloud contract.

Late last year, the Department of Defense announced that the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract would be awarded to Microsoft, over competitor Amazon. The losing firm filed a lawsuit alleging that the President of the United States improperly interfered with the contract, due to personal animosity towards its CEO, Jeff Bezos.

As part of the suit, AWS also claims that the DoD erred in evaluating Microsoft’s proposed offering for online storage, which it calls “noncompliant.” It is this part of the suit that Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith believes the company has a chance of being proved correct.

In a statement recently made public, the Court of Federal Claims judge wrote that AWS was “likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the DoD improperly evaluated” Microsoft's bid.

The longest JEDI saga yet

Army Sgt. Kurt Van De Graaff marches through a cloud of smoke as part of a ruck march event during the 2019 Army National Guard Best Warrior Competition at Camp Gruber in Braggs, Okla., July 18, 2019.
– Kendall James, Oklahoma Army National Guard/DoD

“The court considers it likely that [AWS’s] chances of receiving the award would have increased absent defendant’s evaluation error,” Campbell-Smith wrote. She added that the company will likely be able to show that this alleged error prejudiced and did material harm to the company’s chance of winning the contract.

In a statement, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of communications Frank X. Shaw said: “The decision disagreed with a lone technical finding by the Department of Defense about data storage under the evaluation of one sub-element of one price scenario. We have confidence in our technology, our bid, and the professional staff at the Department of Defense.

"We believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work. Time matters because those who serve our country urgently need access to this essential modern technology.”

A Pentagon spokesperson said that DoD employees "remain focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

JEDI was originally set to begin in February, but Amazon successfully managed to get the contract delayed until the conclusion of its case.

As part of the case, which has seen pro-democracy groups weigh in on Amazon's behalf, the e-commerce and cloud giant wants to depose President Trump.

The case is still ongoing.

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