The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report examining why the CIA chose Amazon ahead of IBM for its recent $600m private cloud contract, and whether IBM has a case to answer with its protests against the decision.

And the conclusion it came to was, to quote The Simpsons, a little from column A and a little from column B. The GAO both sustained and rejected IBM’s complaint in part, and surmised that Amazon’s offer was both “the best value” and a “superior technical solution”.

This comes despite Amazon’s proposal being over $50m a year more expensive – the bean counters found that Amazon would cost $148m annually, as opposed to IBM’s $94m.

In terms of technical specs, the two vendors were put side by side, with Amazon coming out on top. The CIA found that Amazon’s SLA, technical approach and past performance was superior …