Poland’s National Appeals Chamber orders Warsaw to change cloud tender written for AWS
Poland’s National Appeals Chamber upheld two appeals filed by the Poland Cloud Employers’ Association. The capital must change the terms of a contract worth more than PLN 2.4 million gross so that providers other than Amazon Web Services can realistically compete for it.
Poland’s National Appeals Chamber (KIO, the body that resolves disputes in public procurement) ruled in favor of the Poland Cloud Employers’ Association in the case of Warsaw’s tender for public cloud resources. The ruling was described in early September 2026 by, among others, ITwiz, TELKO.in, and CRN.pl. The city announced the tender on June 26, 2026, and the contract is to remain in force for two years.
Formally, the contract concerned the public cloud, but the documentation was closely tied to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The acronym AWS appeared 49 times in the draft contract, and settlements were based on “AWS cloud credits.” According to the association, the documentation formally allowed equivalent solutions, but its conditions made it impossible for competitors to prepare a bid.
After the first appeal, the city itself accepted some of the objections, and the National Appeals Chamber ordered a change to the remuneration rules. After the amendments, the association filed a second appeal. It pointed to the lack of technical data needed for migration from the current AWS environment and the requirement for an AWS Partner Network certificate. The Chamber considered the objections from both appeals jointly and ordered the rules for comparing bids to be clarified, migration data to be provided, and an equivalent certificate to be allowed.
The case concerns the phenomenon of vendor lock-in, meaning dependence on a single technology provider. According to the report “Digital Reason of State,” the central administration spent more than PLN 7 billion on ICT systems in 2024. The authors of the report argue that tenders should also assess data portability and the real possibility of changing providers. This is not the association’s first successful intervention: in March 2026, Poland Cloud led to the cancellation of a large tender at NASK (Research and Academic Computer Network), which, in the organization’s view, excluded Polish solutions.
For years, we discussed who would provide technology to the state. Much less often, we asked ourselves who the state would be dependent on in five or ten years
Available reports present the position of the appealing party. They do not include comment from the City Hall of the Capital City of Warsaw or AWS. IT providers, including smaller ones, can appeal to the National Appeals Chamber against conditions written for a single producer. In this case, the Chamber upheld the demands to provide migration data and allow equivalent certificates.