A federal judge has cleared the way for the US Department of Defense to award its $10bn cloud computing contract to Amazon or Microsoft with a ruling on Friday dismissing a challenge from Oracle. Judge Eric Bruggink of the US Court of Federal Claims dismissed Oracle’s claims that the procurement process violated federal laws meant to ensure a competitive process and was marred by conflicts of interest. Because Oracle could not meet the criteria for the bid, “it cannot demonstrate prejudice as a result of other possible errors in the procurement process,” he wrote. The Pentagon named Amazon and Microsoft as finalists to win the multiyear contract in April, eliminating IBM and Oracle from consideration. It has said it expects to make a final decision by the end of the summer.

Oracle has been complaining about the way the bidding process has been conducted since last year. The company objected to the Pentagon’s decision to award the contact to a single company, rather than breaking it up among several providers, arguing that favours Amazon Web Services as the biggest player in the industry. Oracle has also alleged conflicts of interest over AWS’s hiring of two former defence department employees involved in the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) procurement process.

The company previously filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, which was also rejected. Oracle said in a statement: “We look forward to working with the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and other public sector agencies to deploy modern, secure hyperscale cloud solutions that meet their needs.” AWS, which was a defendant in the case alongside the government, said it “stands ready to support and serve what’s most important — the DoD’s mission of protecting the security of our country. The DoD deserves access to the best technology in the world and we are unwavering in our support to their mission.” “We are pleased with the determination made by the US Court of Federal Claims. This reaffirms the DoD’s position: the JEDI Cloud procurement process has been conducted as a fair, full and open competition, which the contracting officer and her team executed in compliance with the law,” said Elissa Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman. “DoD has an urgent need to get these critical capabilities in place to support the warfighter and we have multiple military services and Combatant Commands waiting on the availability of JEDI. Our focus continues to be on finalising the award decision.”