U.S. appeals court rejects Oracle’s challenge in JEDI contract fight

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Oracle Corp’s long-running legal challenge to how the Pentagon set up its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract has been rejected by a U.S. appeals court.

At the heart of Oracle’s dispute was whether the Pentagon should turn to a single company for its cloud computing services.

In October, the Defense Department awarded the contract to Microsoft Corp , which beat Amazon.com Inc .

The contracting process had long been mired in conflict of interest allegations, even drawing the attention of President Donald Trump, who has taken swipes at Amazon and its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) contract is part of a broader digital modernization of the Pentagon aimed at making it more technologically agile.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)