Oracle Leads Lobby Against AWS for Juicy Pentagon Deal – Bloomberg

Oracle is leading a Washington push to stop Amazon Web Services (AWS) from winning a lucrative Defense Department contract that will be awarded in the coming months, according to a report on Bloomberg Friday.

Oracle is leading a loose coalition of technology companies that also want in on the Pentagon deal, including Microsoft, IBM, Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, according to the Bloomberg report.

The companies want to make sure the award goes to more than one provider, and to unseat Amazon as the front-runner for the deal, valued at several billion dollars, Bloomberg says.

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The Pentagon plans to move 3.4 million users and 4 million devices to the cloud, according to the report, which has more details on AWS's history with the DoD, as well as AWS's, Oracle's, and other major tech vendors lobbying infrastructure in Washington.

Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz has been an early and committed supporter of President Donald Trump. She reportedly suggested in a recent dinner with the President that AWS is getting an unfair advantage in the Pentagon deal, Bloomberg notes.

Trump has been hammering Amazon's retail business for supposedly bilking the U.S. Postal Service with sweetheart deals on package delivery, although Trump's critics say that Amazon's and other package shipments are actually a financial strength for the USPS. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has been critical of Trump, and the President has enthusiastically returned fire. (See Trump Bashes Bezos's Baby, but US Government Is a 'Yooge' Amazon Customer .)

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— Mitch Wagner Editor, Enterprise Cloud, Light Reading