Amazon cloud boss Jassy cites political interference after Pentagon awards contract to rival Microsoft
- Analysts say size and prominence of the Pentagon contract could pierce the inevitability of Amazon’s hegemony in the cloud-infrastructure market.
Amazon’s top cloud-computing executive publicly criticised the Pentagon’s decision Wednesday to award a lucrative contract to rival Microsoft at the company’s annual conference here.
“It’s fairly obvious that we feel pretty strongly that it was not adjudicated fairly,” said Amazon Web Services chief executive Andy Jassy during a news conference Wednesday. “If you do a truly objective, detailed, apples-to-apples comparison with the platforms you don’t end up in a spot where the decision was made.”
The contract, valued at up to US$10 billion over 10 years, was awarded to Microsoft in October and Amazon has formally challenged the Pentagon’s decision, filing a protest with the Court of Federal Claims last month that cites comments by President Donald Trump indicating bias against the company. Trump has repeatedly criticised Amazon, whose founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.
“You ended up with a situation where there was significant political interference,” Jassy said. “When you have a sitting president who is willing to share openly his disdain for a company and the leader of that company, it makes it really difficult for government agencies, including the DoD, to make an objective decision without fear of reprisal.”
While Amazon is aggressively challenging the award, the Pentagon’s decision has also put Amazon on the defensive at the cloud-computing re: Invent conference. Company executives often say they remain focused on customers, rather than competitors. But Jassy and other Amazon executives took opportunities during their presentations to chide Microsoft for high prices and restrictive-licensing terms, as well as to tout their market lead.
Microsoft declined to comment on Amazon’s claims.