Bloomberg reports the US Court of Federal Claims decided against IBM following pleas for the CIA to reopen bidding on building its private cloud-- meaning Amazon is closer to taking the $600 million contract.
The contract involves the provision of computing power, storage and further online services to the agency.
"We are disappointed with the ruling from the US Court of Federal Claims, reversing the GAO’s recommendation to reopen the competition and correct flaws in the bidding process,” an IBM statement says before claiming the Big Blue offer "was superior in many ways, including being substantially more cost-effective.”
News of the CIA going to Amazon to for its cloud needs emerged on March 2013, following reports of the agency requiring a cost-effective private cloud infrastructure. On hearing the news IBM launched a protest leading to a demand to reopen bidding from the US government's General Accounting Office.
The Amazon reaction to said demand? A lawsuit, naturally.
The CIA's decision is significant to the government IT sphere, not just in the US but worldwide-- historically such contracts go to the more established (and presumably more reliable) players, namely IBM or Microsoft. It also the first Amazon 3rd party data centre, meaning the cloud game might become even more competitive in the near future.
