‘Don’t beat a dead horse’ doesn’t seem to be a phrase Oracle is familiar with, as the company continues to pursue its JEDI contract case.
The Pentagon’s JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) was designed to help the Department of Defense (DoD) modernize its infrastructure using commercial cloud providers. AWS, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle were the top vendors vying for the project.
Early on, IBM and Oracle were both eliminated. Despite AWS being the favorite, the DoD ultimately awarded the contract to Microsoft. AWS immediately sued, claiming Microsoft was awarded the contract unfairly. After a protracted legal battle, with no end in sight, the DoD ultimately withdrew Microsoft’s win and abandoned the contract.
Despite that eventuality, and despite Oracle’s early elimination for not meeting the requirements, the company seems intent on continuing its challenge to the DoD’s initial ruling.
Law Street Media reports that Oracle is claiming the DoD’s alleged misconduct doesn’t just end because the contract was cancelled, and could reasonably be expected to occur again with future contracts.
Ironically, one of Oracle’s main contentions with the initial contract terms was the DoD awarding the JEDI contract to a single vendor instead of adopting a multi-vendor approach. When the DoD abandoned JEDI, it switched gears and said it will tap multiple vendors for its next attempt, the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract. In spite of the DoD changing its approach, Oracle is still not satisfied.
“Cases do not become moot simply because a defendant issues a press release claiming to have ceased its misconduct,” Oracle claims in a court filing.
Again…dead horse.