From the AWS blog post [0].
> This time, AWS offered a lower cost by several tens of millions of dollars.
On a contract worth $10bn does tens of millions really make a difference?
[0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/jedi-why-we-will-c...
> This time, AWS offered a lower cost by several tens of millions of dollars.
On a contract worth $10bn does tens of millions really make a difference?
[0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/jedi-why-we-will-c...
In government contracting, if cost is supposedly the formal deciding criteria, yes.
The allegation isn't that the cost amount was significant as a value amount, but that it's one of many examples raised of the DoD allegedly making decisions for which pretexts are offered that are inconsistent with the facts.
The laws of government contracting don't allow the kind of arbitrarily moving goalposts that Amazon’s description of the DoD behavior would indicate, and the reason it doesn't is as a safeguard against corrupt political favoritism with contracts as patronage.
Focussing on whether the cost qua cost is significant in isolation is focussing is missing the forest for the trees.
The government should provide detailed evidence to the taxpayers as to why it needs to go with a more expensive options.
I am all for having competition in the space, but if Microsoft is not giving a clearly superior product for the money then why should the taxpayers spend extra money on it? Although, I am willing to listen to the case that the government needs to have the competition in the space to ensure its own future interests and that is worth an extra cost. But that is not the case that is being presented. At least not that I have seen.