A Judge Will Soon Decide If Amazon Gets To Build The CIA A $600 Million Cloud
Amazon surprised the enterprise world in August. It wants a judge to rule in its tiff with IBM over the CIA's $600 million cloud.
On Wednesday we learned that a judge will hear oral starting October 7, from Gigaom's Barb Darrow.
The drama began in March, when news broke that Amazon won a huge contract with the CIA. This cloud would be a game-changer in the industry for a couple of reasons. It was for a so-called "private cloud" meaning it would reside in the CIA's data center, not Amazon's. Amazon is by far the largest cloud computing vendor, but this would be its first-ever private cloud.
The cloud was for the CIA. Many of Amazon's competitors position themselves as being more secure and reliable than Amazon. If the CIA thought Amazon's cloud tech was secure and reliable enough, then other enterprises would, too.
But IBM, which had put in a competitive bid, protested the CIA award. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated and found that Amazon's bid was a whopping $54 million higher than IBM's. It asked the CIA to go back through the bidding process and the CIA agreed.
UPDATED: Amazon submitted another bid and filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Federal Court of Claims. It argued that IBM's protest was flawed and that the CIA should be able to stick with its original decision to award the contract to Amazon.
Through it all, Amazon and the CIA have been fairly tight-lipped about the cloud itself. Most of what we've learned has been through court documents. If nothing else, the trial should shed more light on the CIA's big cloud plans, whoever gets to build it.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
- Should you be worried about the potential side-effects of the Covishield vaccine?
- India T20 World Cup squad: KulCha back on menu, KL Rahul dropped
- Sales of homes priced over ₹4 crore rise 10% in Jan-Mar in top 7 cities: CBRE
- Gold prices fluctuate as geopolitical tensions ease; US Fed meeting, payroll data to affect prices this week
- Best beaches to visit in Goa in 2024
- Nothing Phone (2a) blue edition launched
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market