US Army Signs $471,000,000 Deal for Microsoft Software 1260
zero_offset writes "According to this article at Yahoo, Microsoft will provide software for 494,000 Army computers during the next six years. At roughly $950 per computer this clearly involves more than just the OS, although the article unfortunately doesn't provide details, and I was unable to find any references to this on the Microsoft website." The great things about this deal: the Army is going through a reseller, when clearly they have the purchasing power to buy direct; and most of the computers they purchase are normal consumer machines which will be purchased with Windows and Office already installed, so the Army will be paying twice for each machine.
Gross Misuse of Tax Payer Funds (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Justice Department: Bad Microsoft.. you must pay $500 million and promise to never do it again.
Defense Deparment: Here Microsoft.. $471 million for you...
Right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing? Or does it?
Re:Good News (Score:5, Interesting)
Was this a positive post for our government wasting money?
What are you thinking man? Don't end your post here, elaborate.
Why on earth can you concieve of this being a good thing? Because there will be fewer smart bombs purchased?
This just in, If we want bombs, we buy bombs.
We are in a republican controlled government. All that changes is the size of the debt.
About $200,000,000 wasted (Score:2, Interesting)
Pretty sad that our military wastes extreme amounts of money on computer systems that they know they will have to upgrade shortly (more $$$, no jobs), will keep them open to the threat of widespread viruses (more $$$, no new jobs), and contains code that they can not see (no new jobs). This is fucking sad, man.
True cost... (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the kids going into the army have some experience with computers: computers running Windows. The more familiar new recruits are with Army technology the less training will be required and the less time/resources/money need to be invested in getting newly enlisted GIs up to speed. The military is like a business in many ways. They write memos, reports, letters, make spreadsheets and send email. The most efficient way of getting all personel on the same page technologically is to deploy the "lowest common denominator". That is to say, software that is good enough and easy enough to use.
Re:Cost analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
But a recent West Wing episode pops into my head.
Anyway, I've looked at military spending differently since that episode...
Oh, and Microsoft sucks... blah, blah, blah...
Davak
Uh oh.. It, uh, crashed.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't wait to see this. I'm not sure if the Army will be significant enough pressure to make m$ security better. In fact, they're a small piece in the bigger pie.
While this is probably cheaper than the defense departments $300 toilet seat vendors (hey, they probably at least had a backup toilet seat tho), it doesn't make too much sense to me. I'm reminded of the Navy vessel that crashed running NT [gcn.com].
Given that XP is still having issues with updates and such, I'm wondering what the Army was thinking. But then again, that is often the case..
Its cant be just a software deal! (Score:1, Interesting)
if its a Hardware deal as well, where is the Headlines on DELL/IBM/HP bagging multi million dollar Army deal!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
How quickly we all forget... (Score:3, Interesting)
"it's working out all-right"?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest you read this Wired article [wired.com] to see how well it works. They are using Microsoft Chat on the battlefield, for crying out loud! Yes, the one with the comic characters, where the staff seargant looks like a big breasted bimbo. Nothing inspired a feeling of technical superiority like that, if you ask me.
At least the important systems [slashdot.org] run Linux.
Re:The Seattle PI has a little more (Score:4, Interesting)
From a soldier's point of view. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:True cost... (Score:2, Interesting)
I suspect choosing Microsoft products is more about standardizing within the Army (or lining somebody's pockets for the conspiracy theory view) than what goes on in the civilian world. If they can train men to kill with rifles, grenades and machine guns, can't they train them to select some files in Explorer or type "ls?"
Re:Paying twice? (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anyone here use Win for anything other than gam (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Keynesian economics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah Buddy! (Score:3, Interesting)
I will post it when I figure out how to sanatize my source
Re:A soldier's perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Modified by whom? Certified for DoD use by whom? As for "services ...the army needs", even the army can't tell you that, so they'd say "just make it do everything". Also, who's going to port all the lame crap software the army already has that runs under windows? What if some of it can't be ported?
The problems you described do not happen with a properly configured system.
People don't forget passwords or forget which printer is theirs in Linux? [scoff!]
I would guess even someone in B. CO 1/509th Abn could figure out.
Figure out isn't the problem. You say Linux can be made unbreakable. Nobody who's ever given anything to an 11B (infantryman) ever calls anything unbreakable. You can't depend upon something being robust to protect it, you have to have people available who can fix it when it breaks.
No offence intended.
None taken. Hooah.
SGT DunMalg 3/187th MI Bde 101st ABN Div (Air Assault) (1987-1993)
Re:Did [Linux company] bid on this contract? (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that if it's at all possible, government money should be used to benefit the general population. Funding open-source projects is a good way to get the job done and benefit the tax payers as well. This project would've been perfect for that.
Instead the money just goes to fund the richest corporation in the world.
I'm an Army Sysadmin (Score:5, Interesting)
another thing is that while the liscense costs for all the software that they're getting isn't horrible price-gouging, we don't fucking need it.
I'm in an officer school, the only function for having a database is for keeping track of student information. I already have an access database in place with an oracle database slowly replacing it. I don't need or want SQL and NONE of my users need it, either. we don't need to buy a shit load of liscenses at slightly above prices, what we need is to break that chunk of cash up and give it to the units so that their Sysadmins and IMOs can determine what the unit needs.
I'll give you a little story as an example of how trying to add too many pieces to the puzzle WILL fuck up a supply chain:
earlier this year, I needed 14 computers. I sat down and figured out the paperwork bullshit and forms for it (I'm actually Infantry and have zero training for admin stuff). I priced out how much it would cost for what we needed and found several retailers that we could go through. I sent that stuff up to higher and after about 2 months of that paperwork going through commitee and bueracracy, I got 14 computers that were totally different from what I requested, cost more, lacked software liscenses and hardware that my users needed for them to do their jobs.
anyone higher than brigade levels has no fucking clue what a battalion needs, and even then they don't really know.
this whole package for stuff we don't need irritates me.
Re:This doesn't strike me as unreasonable. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is unfortunately extremely true. I'm in the Army myself, and I usually don't even bother to talk to anyone from our Automations department (who actually receive about 24 weeks training in Windows, Solaris, and UNIX... although almost exclusively Windows). We have 18 people in our Automations department, 3 of which have ever *heard* of Linux, 1 of which has heard of Linux because I showed it to them, and the other 2 who actually use it at home. The other 15 I think would go braindead before I even got to a command line (and remember, they've supposedly had training on UNIX).
That's the state most Brigades in the Army are in right now. We're actually lucky to have 2 people who know what Linux is. Those 2 people actually get 95% of the work done as well, the other 16 sit around and unlock accounts for people when they enter their password wrong 4 times and make bad patch cable (they've never made one right for me yet... I stole some crimpers from them a while ago and just make my own now if I need some).
The sterotype that the US Government has all the coolest stuff is really way off. We may have the coolest stuff that goes "BOOM", but we also have a monopoly on the technology. When it comes to computer technology we are in many ways still in the 1970s, and continuing to fall behind.
Dak
Reality Check (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, unless any of you have any real experience with the costs associated with outfitting an entity as large as the US Army with computers, I don't think you're qualified to make assumptions about how Linux "obviously" would've saved 50-90% of the cost. There's a saying in business that when you have people bidding on a contract you throw away the top N% (because they're ripping you off) and the bottom N% (lowballers -- they're obviously underestimating the cost of the job and are under-experienced) and pick among the people in the middle. Hmm, where do you think someone like Redhat would show up relative to other bidders? Furthermore, what makes you think that the Army didn't rule out Redhat (or whatever other "Linux support" company) primarily because they have shown NO history of being able to handle customers with needs as large as the Army? When was Redhat's last $470 million contract, hmm? Don't assume that they'd be up to the job of support just because MS can do it and anything MS can do Linux can do better.
I mean really guys, come on. Don't let your seething hatred of MS blind you to realities of the situation. Maybe, just maybe, with all things considered MS was the better choice.
Re:uh oh (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like nowadays, you still get crap, but you don't get to pick low bids. Lovely. Makes me really, really glad I'm already a veteran and too old to draft or drag back in.
Re:Why Windows? Why not !!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Using Windows SAVED the taxpayers money in this situation. I'll say that a little more firmly than YrWrstNtmr did, because its absolutely true. "Ahh, what a tangled web we weave" is very true of large organizations, who, over time, work, re-work, custom interfaces, databases, apps, etc., into such a web of interdependency, that you'd have to be DEVOTED, no, more like FERVENTLY in support of using linux to want to even begin to consider touching those interdependencies.
Sorry, Wrong. (Score:2, Interesting)
This might be true in other government departments, but year after year Congress gives the Pentagon more money than they ask for.
So give them something that will kill them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore you want to simplify the training by standardizing on a system which not only holds the record for security vulnerabilities, but whose source has been delivered to the electronic warfare departments of most of our potential enemies but NOT to our own academic-community security specialists?
What do you do the next time there's a conflict and some new crop of blended-threat self-propagating worms (locusts?) suddenly takes out the US Army's entire office infrastructure?
==============
While you're at it, why are you advocating depending on the NON-standardized training the recruits got as civilians rather than teaching them "The Army Way"? (But if you MUST, why not use a Windows-like interface and workalike basic apps, ala Lindows or KDE + OpenOffice, for the basic stuff? They have to learn the army-specific apps anyhow. Meanwhile there's a good chance the next crop of high-school students will be learning on open source platforms rather than Windows, due to developments already discussed on Slashdot.)
Re:Why Windows? Why not !!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me fill you in on how it works. I can only speak to the USAF method, and not the Army, because that is what I have intimate knowledge of.
Most custom apps are written in-house. Not contracted out, and certainly not contracted out to Microsoft. MS (and other vendors) provides the framework. Windows, Office, SQLServer, Oracle, etc. The actual applications are written in house. Either by one of the main software houses (1 for Air Combat Command (Langley AFB), and 1 for Air Mobility Command(Scott AFB)). Or in the case of small tools, maybe by a knowledgable user in the particular office. And there are a LOT of those. If the project gets big enough, it may get taken over by one of the aforementioned s/w houses.
The USAF (ACC at least), had/has a "Self Help Lab'. An organization, in need of a tool/application, can send a couple of 'user-experts', and the guys teach them how to build and maintain their own code. I was the NCOIC of the first one of those at Langley.
The USAF owns the code for all these applications. There is no 'proprietary code', owned by an outside vendor for these tools. Does the USAF have the source code for MSProject? No. Does it matter? Again, no. If MS decides to make Project2004 incompatible with Project2000...you have 2 choices. Don't buy 2004 and stay on your current version, or modify your custom app that sits on top of it (of which you DO have the code for). The exact same thing would happen with a app that had been outsourced in OSS. Don't upgrade or modify.
Sure...some things get outsourced. But guess what? Quite often, the source code is part of the deal! And can be maintained/modified, in house, forever and ever.
Be it a custom app on top of MSProject, or an aircrew medical records screening process, or a training munition distribution application...the USAF already owns and has posession of the code, to modify at will.
Although OSS is not easy to use, it can be. An easy to use interface is just that, an interface. It is evolutionary. Things become easier to use overtime with advances in technology.
And only just now are OSS tools becoming viable. Even just a year or two ago, Linux as the base, and all OSS tools on top of that, was not a viable prospect.
Microsoft unfortunately tried to go for ease-of-use before having a strong foundation. They did more harm to the IT industry than most people realize.
On that we agree. And eventually, we will dig ourselves out of this hole. Once a complete end to end alternate is available. The penguin is almost there, but not quite.
The military CIO's are not stupid people. On the contrary, quite intelligent. And VERY budget oriented. Just because they have not so far chosen to switch to Linux does not mean it isn't being considered. Very closely.
How many 500,000 person, global companies have made the desktop switch to Linux? How many have considered it, and put it on the shelf for later, when more/better tools are available?