Microsoft Takes Further Action Over NSA Cloud Contract
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By
Frank Konkel
The tech company filed a supplemental protest.
Microsoft filed a supplemental protest with the Government Accountability Office Sept. 2 over a National Security Agency cloud contract worth up to $10 billion that the intelligence agency instead awarded to Amazon Web Services.
The tech company’s supplemental protest follows its initial protest—filed on July 21—over the NSA contract, which is codenamed “WildandStormy.” A supplemental protest indicates a company is challenging the award on new legal grounds. However, given the sensitive nature of the intelligence contract, no information regarding Microsoft’s protest grounds are publicly available.
WildandStormy is the second multibillion-dollar cloud contract the U.S. intelligence community has awarded in the past year. While it bears the same total ceiling value as the Pentagon’s now-canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, WildandStormy is a completely separate effort by the NSA to modernize its primary classified data repository, the Intelligence Community GovCloud.
GAO is expected to issue a decision on both protests by Oct. 29.
Washington Technology first reported news of Microsoft’s supplement protest.