Trump may look into Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract

President Trump said today he may look into the Pentagon's pending Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract competition in the wake of complaints from Microsoft and Oracle, according to a White House pool report.

"Great companies are complaining about it," Trump said of the JEDI cloud contract competition, according to the pool report, which listed Microsoft and Oracle as companies the president mentioned. Bloomberg News first reported yesterday that the president was considering intervening in the competition.

Last week, a judge ruled against Oracle America's protest of the JEDI solicitation in the Court of Federal Claims. Oracle had argued against the JEDI requirements, which the company said were unduly restrictive, as well as the Pentagon's single-award strategy for the potentially 10-year, $10 billion award.

Oracle had also alleged multiple DOD employees presented conflicts of interest due to their connections with Amazon Web Services. But the judge sided with DOD in determining those potential conflicts did not impact the integrity of the JEDI competition.

Now, DOD plans to award the contract to either Amazon or Microsoft in August after determining they are the only two cloud providers who can meet the department's requirements.

The Pentagon wants JEDI to be its "general purpose," enterprise-wide cloud available across the department, as well as U.S. military operating locations around the world.