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IBM Files JEDI Protest

The company is the second to take the unusual step of a pre-award protest.

The outlook remains stormy for the Pentagon’s potential $10 billion cloud computing contract known as JEDI as technology giant IBM files a pre-award protest. Credit: 12019/Pixabay

IBM announced in a blog post that it has filed a pre-award protest against the Defense Department’s potential $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing program. Proposals for the effort are due Friday, October 12.

Oracle filed a pre-award protest in August.

IBM’s blog post, written by Sam Gordy, general manager, IBM U.S. Federal, says that JEDI “as outlined in the final solicitation, would not provide the strongest possible foundation for the 21st century battlefield.”

In the post, IBM complains that JEDI mandates a single cloud environment for up to 10 years, and alleges that the program “turns its back on government-recognized best practices” and “restricts fields of competition.”

“Certain requirements in the RFP either mirror one vendor’s internal processes or unnecessarily mandate that certain capabilities be in place by the bid submission deadline versus when the work would actually begin. Such rigid requirements serve only one purpose: to arbitrarily narrow the field of bidders,” the blog states.