Oracle Is Said to Lead Anti-Amazon Lobby on Pentagon Cloud Bid

Oracle is leading a campaign in Washington to prevent Amazon from winning a lucrative Defense Department computing contract that’ll be awarded in coming months, according to Bloomberg, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The Oracle-led effort relies on a loose coalition of technology companies also seeking a slice of the Pentagon work, including Microsoft and IBM, said the people, who described the matter on condition of anonymity. Dell and HPE are also participating, said one of the people.

Their goal is to make sure that the award process is opened up to more than one company and unseat Amazon as the front-runner for the multibillion-dollar deal. As part of the campaign, the people said, Oracle is holding regular calls with tech allies, courting trade and mainstream media and lobbying lawmakers, defense officials and the White House.

The tech companies are jockeying for a piece of the Pentagon’s cloud business, which will provide a rich revenue stream and give the winner an edge in government cloud computing. Oracle has long-term contracts with many departments that use its flagship database to store information on their own systems.

As the agencies look to switch to cloud computing and eye market-leader Amazon, Oracle’s traditional revenue sources could be under threat. Oracle has tried to protect its database business by offering cloud services of its own, but has come late to that market. The Pentagon has said it intends to move the department’s technology needs, 3.4 million users and 4 million devices, to the cloud, indicating the massive size of the award.

“Of course Oracle is interested in competing for the DoD cloud contract and we are equally interested in the mission success of the DoD," said Oracle’s Senior Vice President Ken Glueck in a statement. IBM said in a statement it has been advocating for a multi-cloud approach for months, without commenting on whether it’s involved in an Oracle-led coalition.