A top Oracle exec says that Amazon is creating a ‘false debate’ in order to help it win the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract (ORCL, AMZN, MSFT, GOOG, IBM)

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Ken Glueck, Oracle’s top executive in Washington DC, accused Amazon of propagating a narrow "one-size fits all" view of cloud computing in the $10 billion JEDI Pentagon cloud contract.
The Pentagon has narrowed down the contenders for the JEDI contract to Amazon and Microsoft. The Defense Department contract is for one of the biggest public cloud projects ever.
Oracle has challenged the decision in court. The tech giant’s legal protest is set to go before a judge this week.
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The top Oracle executive leading the charge against the Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI contract on Monday accused Amazon of pushing a narrow, self-serving view of cloud computing.

Ken Glueck, Oracle’s executive vice president, who is the company’s point man in Washington DC, said Amazon’s flawed view is at the core of the fight over the Defense Department project.

"The problem is we’re having a false debate: single cloud versus multi-cloud," Glueck told Business Insider. "Customers buy the clouds that fit their particular needs, which is almost always more than one. This one-size fits all idea is, I think, limited to JEDI and promoted by Amazon, because it fits Amazon’s needs."

JEDI is short for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, the Pentagon platform that will store and manage sensitive military and defense data. The project is expected to become one of the biggest public cloud projects ever, which is why it sparked heated competition among the top cloud providers, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Oracle.

The Defense Department named Microsoft and Amazon as the final contenders for the contract, but Oracle has challenged the decision, particularly the Pentagon’s decision to award the contract only to a single vendor.

The legal protest goes before a federal judge this week.

Amazon vs. Microsoft

The Pentagon has defended its decision to narrow down the choices to two major cloud providers, and its rejection of Oracle’s bid. In a recent filing, the agency said Oracle is "not in the same class as Microsoft and AWS when it comes to providing commercial IaaS and PaaS cloud services on a broad scale."

But Glueck said the Pentagon’s push for a single vendor for the JEDI project does not make sense, noting that other major federal agencies — including the US Navy and the Department of Homeland Security – opted to create their networks with different cloud providers.

To that end, Glueck suggests that even if the DoD found some aspect of Oracle’s solution lacking, dismissing it out of hand entirely is to ignore what it sees as the benefits of its cloud platform. That would leave the door open to mix-and-matching other cloud services to shore up any perceived weaknesses in Oracle’s platform, he says.

"The Office of Management and Budget recommends a multiple solution answer," he said. "The outlier here seems to be JEDI. I don’t think any single vendor is purpose fit for all of DoD’s needs. Oracle is purpose fit for high-performance and high-security workloads. We may not be a perfect fit for other needs."

Oracle’s view has been supported by some tech industry analysts who think the Pentagon’s approach is flawed.

"The Pentagon’s desire for a one stop shop in cloud with a winner-takes-all model is not good for competition and will allow the winner to gain a significant market advantage over the losers," analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research told Business Insider.

Google, for its part, dropped out of the running for JEDI in October, before the bidding process formally closed. At the time it dropped its bid, however, Google echoed some of Oracle’s current rhetoric.

"Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," a spokesperson said in a statement at the time. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."

In the meanwhile, Google has made its own bets on supporting multi-cloud environments, with a tool called Google Anthos as its flagship offering in the space.

‘Riddled with improprieties’

Oracle has also argued that the JEDI contract process was "riddled with improprieties," claiming that "[Amazon Web Services] made undisclosed employment and bonus offers to at least two DoD (Dept. of Defense) JEDI officials." The Pentagon and Amazon has denied the accusations.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Defense Department emails showed DoD officials met a few times with Amazon executives in early 2017, although it was not clear if the JEDI contract was discussed.

The Defense Department responded to the report by defending the JEDI contract process. "From the beginning, the enterprise cloud initiative has been open, transparent and full," spokesperson Elissa Smith told Business Insider.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the "meetings had nothing to do with the JEDI procurement, and those implying otherwise either are misinformed or disappointed competitors trying to distract with innuendo versus competing fairly with their technical capabilities."

Got a tip about Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentel. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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