Protest of Pentagon's JEDI Cloud Contract Award Decision Likely to Continue Into 2021

The Department of Defense reaffirmed its decision to award the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) in early September but a joint status report issued by the Court of Federal Claims Tuesday reveals several scenarios that could extend the JEDI contract protest into 2021, the Washington Business Journal reported Wednesday.

Under the new court schedule, DoD officials will come up by Sept. 21 an amended administrative record of procurement for the JEDI program and Amazon Web Services will file by Oct. 9 an amended complaint.

A battle of motions between the Pentagon and AWS is likely to ensue as the latter requests further discovery of the procurement and seeks depositions of President Donald Trump and DoD officials. The court is expected to rule on the matter no later than Dec. 4, according to the joint status report.

AWS will file by Dec. 23 a motion for judgment on the administrative record should the court decline to grant the company’s discovery requests, while DoD will submit by Jan. 15 its own MJAR in support of the procurement. Subsequent motions from both parties could stretch into Feb. 5.

If the court grants the discovery requests of AWS, the timeframe for that discovery will depend on the court’s decision.

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