Oracle is trying once again to get itself put back into the running for JEDI, the $10 billion cloud contract that Amazon is the favorite to win

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Oracle is trying once again to get itself put back into the running for JEDI, the $10 billion cloud contract that Amazon is the favorite to win

mark hurd oracle ceo

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

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  • Oracle said it is appealing a federal judge's decision to reject its bid to be reconsidered for the Pentagon $10 billion JEDI cloud project.
  • The Pentagon had named Microsoft and Amazon as the finalists for the project, rejecting Oracle's bid. Oracle's legal challenge, which included claims that it was "riddled with improprieties," was rejected by a federal judge.
  • In its appeal, Oracle cited a previously-sealed opinion in which the judge pointed to flaws in the contract bid process. An Oracle general counsel argued that the opinion showed was "unlawful on several grounds."
  • The fate of the JEDI project remains unclear after the Defense Department Inspector General's office said it was reviewing the contact process.
  • Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Oracle is still fighting for JEDI.

The tech giant on Monday said it has filed an appeal related to a federal judge's decision to reject its bid to be reconsidered for the Pentagon's $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, project.

"The procurement was unlawful on several grounds," Dorian Daley, Oracle's general counsel, said in a statement.

The legal tussle began when the Defense Department had decided to name Microsoft and Amazon as the finalists for its plan to build a cloud platform that will store and manage sensitive military and defense data.

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Oracle challenged the decision, saying the bidding process was "riddled with improprieties" that largely favored Amazon, including undisclosed employment and bonus offers to DoD officials. The software giant also argued that the standards the DoD set for the contract were unfair.

A federal judge ruled against Oracle last month, saying "individual conflicts of interest did not impact the procurement."

In announcing Oracle's decision to appeal, Daley cited a separate and previously sealed opinion by the same federal judge that was critical of the JEDI bid process.

The opinion, Daley said, "acknowledges that the procurement suffers from many significant conflicts of interest. These conflicts violate the law and undermine the public trust."

But Christopher Cornillie, a Bloomberg Government analyst, said that while the judge raised concerns in that opinion, "those concerns were rendered moot by his determination that Oracle had been fairly eliminated from competition."

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The top priority for Oracle's legal team will be making the case that it does, in fact, have standing to protest JEDI," Cornillie told Business Insider. "It'll be interesting to see how they do that."

Oracle's appeal marks another twist in the JEDI project. The Defense Department had planned to announce the contract winner as early as late August.

But the Trump Administration asked the Defense Department to review the bid process, raising the possibility that the JEDI contract would be delayed. There was speculation that Trump's high-profile feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos could be a factor for the White House's request.

Two weeks ago, the Defense Department's inspector general's office said it had assembled a team of editors, investigators and attorneys to review the project.

"We are investigating whether current or former DoD officials committed misconduct relating to the JEDI acquisition, such as whether any had any conflicts of interest related to their involvement in the acquisition process," DoD spokesperson Dwrena Allen told Business Insider.

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