Lawsuit On Hold While Pentagon Conducts Fresh Inquiry Into JEDI Contract

A federal court has agreed to postpone a lawsuit challenging the Pentagon's $10 billion JEDI cloud contract while the department conducts its own investigation into possible conflicts of interest, reports the Federal News Network.

The court was previously scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case brought by Oracle on April 4.

The decision comes after the Pentagon said that it had new evidence into potential conflicts of interest in the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a spokeswoman told Breaking Defense on Tuesday.

Oracle and IBM filed protests after it was announced that Amazon Web Services won the deal. 

The Government Accountability Office rejected both protests late last year.

Oracle then filed a federal suit, alleging that the decision to rely on a single bidder was illegal.

The Pentagon maintains that its lack of expertise in setting up an enterprise cloud service necessitates a single contract until it has sufficient experience. 

Opponents of the decision say the requirements were tailored to benefit Amazon, which eventually won the contract. 

Oracle has also alleged that at least two DoD employees with ties to Amazon helped mold the competition to favor the web company.