A federal court today dismissed an appeal from Oracle Corp. to revise JEDI, the Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud computing contract, dealing another blow to the company’s chances of securing a slice of the deal.

Oracle filed suit in December after an earlier petition to the Government Accountability Office failed. The company argued that the JEDI bidding process unfairly favors its rivals in the cloud market. Oracle’s complaint singled out Amazon Web Services Inc. in particular, which is widely seen as the frontrunner to win the lucrative contract. 

Federal Claims Court senior judge Eric Bruggink, who reviewed the case, wasn’t convinced. Bruggink wrote in today’s brief ruling that Oracle “cannot demonstrate prejudice” in the procurement process because it failed to meet the bidding requirements set out by the Department of Defense. 

The order also rejects the company’s claim that the contract was tainted by conflicts of interest. In its suit, Oracle said that at least three former DOD staffers involved in JEDI had ties to AWS that may affect the integrity of the procurement process. Its lawyers charged that one of the employees went as far as making disparaging remarks about AWS rivals.

Bruggink’s ruled in favor of the DOD on this point as well. The judge accepted the department’s findings that an “organizational conflict of interest does not exist and that individual conflicts of interest did not impact the procurement.”

The order doesn’t touch on Oracle’s third argument, which took issue with the winner-takes-all-structure of JEDI. But that may change: The Federal Claims Court is set to issue a more detailed, final judgment along with a supporting opinion in the immediate future.

The ruling clears the way for the government finally to award the contract. The winner will be either AWS or Microsoft Corp., the only other player still left in the race — though it’s widely expected that AWS will prevail. Pentagon Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said earlier this year that she expects the decision to be announced by the end of August.

The legal battle over JEDI may continue even after the contract is formally issued. Ahead of today’s ruling, sources told Federal News Network that Oracle would likely take the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals should its legal challenge be rejected.

Oracle said in a statement that “we look forward to working with the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and other public sector agencies to deploy modern, secure hyperscale cloud solutions that meet their needs.”

AWS, which was a co-defendant in the Court of Federal Claims case, also issued a carefully neutral statement: “AWS, along with our partner community, stands ready to support and serve what’s most important – the DOD’s mission of protecting the security of our country. The DOD deserves access to the best technology in the world and we are unwavering in our support to their mission.”

Photo: gregwest98/Flickr