Pentagon Watchdog Clears Microsoft's $10 Billion Win Over Amazon (bloomberg.com) 53
The Defense Department's watchdog found no evidence that the Pentagon's controversial decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft was the result of interference from President Donald Trump, though it said its probe was limited by the White House. From a report: The 317-page report issued Wednesday by the inspector general also found that giving the JEDI contract to a single company -- Microsoft -- rather than dividing it among competitors was "consistent with applicable acquisition standards." While the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project was hotly disputed by rival technology companies from the start, the project gained broader attention when Trump publicly expressed concern about the assumption that the contract would go to Amazon.com.
Microsoft is cheaper on this note (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon has a ton of prerequisites that make it a very expensive endeavor in the long run. In my opinion Google is probably the cheapest but also requires either a ton of technical knowhow and doing your cloud the "Google way", Microsoft is somewhere between Amazon and Google when it comes to simplicity and cost for custom servers.
Oracle sued when the contract was going to AWS, now AWS is suing when the contract is going to Microsoft, everyone will sue unless they get the contract. Even if they don't win, they will get concessions during future projects in order to not have a 3 year legal delay.
They should go with (Score:2, Insightful)
A hybrid, multi-vendor, cloud. DoD has the money, and that avoids lock-in. It also limits damage if (when) a vulnerability is found in one of them.
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It also limits damage if (when) a vulnerability is found in one of them.
It also means you have to audit 3 different systems which means you're less likely to find those vulnerabilities.
Vulnerabilities are vastly more likely via misconfiguration vs platform. Configuring and securing 3 different platforms sounds far more risky.
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But if doing RHEL, which they DO have a lot of.....well, they're in for some...*ahem* challenges.
Especially since the govt side of Azure is pretty far behind on tech from the public side of Azure.
Re: They should go with (Score:2)
theres nothing about using azure that explicitly requires you to use Windows. However, if you do have windows components in your infrastructure then azure is the clear choice.
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Oracle and Amazon's reaction to not getting the contract justifies them not getting the contract.
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Oracle and Amazon's reaction to not getting the contract justifies them not getting the contract.
Microsoft would have reacted the same way. Should they be disqualified as well?
Re:Microsoft is cheaper on this note (Score:5, Interesting)
Oracle sued when the contract was going to AWS, now AWS is suing when the contract is going to Microsoft, everyone will sue unless they get the contract. Even if they don't win, they will get concessions during future projects in order to not have a 3 year legal delay.
I was involved with an RFP for a project many years ago, and the candidates were IBM, Sun and SGI (so that gives you some idea of the timeframe). As soon as we awarded the contract to one of them, I had the other two tell me directly to my face that they would be suing. No reason given, and the way they so nonchalantly said it made me realize that this was just the normal way of business. Like dealing with children, if they don't get their way, it's an automatic complaint to the parents. So nothing surprises me anymore about these companies, and it really opened my eyes to how childish some of the exec's at these companies really are.
Re:Microsoft is cheaper on this note (Score:4, Interesting)
And it's why when goverment procures a hammer, it costs $500.
Because of all the lawsuits, the costs to defend them, plus the utter amount of bureaucracy required to ensure that every proposal is looked at fairly (even if they don't quality), and documented, the costs jump dramatically.
Government procurement is so highly scrutinized because of all that that it's basically extremely fair. Even if there was no hope your submission was adequate or met the requirements, the government forces itself to evaluate it on all the criteria simply because it cannot afford to let anything slip through lest some eagle eyed lawyer starts suing.
And of course, when the course of business is to sue, you got to make sure every i is dotted and t crossed because everything will get scrutinized in mind numbing detail - Vendory XYZ forgot to cross the T in section 3 subsection A paragraph 2 sentence 3. They should've been disqualified. Why weren't they? (And that's where you learn it's the index or the cover letter or something)
The rules are quite tough and when you boil it down, it turns your $5 hammer into a $500 one because you had to involve a dozen departments and senior staff and engineers to ensure that the decision you made was completely unbiased.
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How does this compute? (Score:4, Interesting)
What?
No evidence of interference, but the White House limited the investigation....
"No officer, I don't have weed in the car."
"No officer, I do not consent to you searching my car."
"Sir, I can smell the weed from outside your vehicle."
"No officer, I don't have weed in the car, I'm the President."
"Sir, you don't have weed in the car."
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Lord Dampnut's MO in reaction to any scrutiny, from Russia election meddling, to Ukraine quid pro quos, to assorted nominees, to tax returns, to business conflicts of interest (does anybody still remember the photo-op of the table full of papers nobody was allowed to actually read), to who knows what else.
Re:How does this compute? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So what's the conspiracy theory here? Why would Trump prefer liberal corporate elitist Gates over liberal corporate elitist Bezos?
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Why would Trump prefer liberal corporate elitist Gates over liberal corporate elitist Bezos?
Because Bezos owns the Washington Post.
WaPo has gotten under Trump's skin many times. So he wants revenge and is willing to be petulant and unethical to get it.
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OK, that's a ... theory, I guess. Kind of a boring one though, with no aliens.
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OK, that's a ... theory, I guess. Kind of a boring one though, with no aliens.
Jeff Bezos is an alien. A Ferengi. He had plastic surgery done to look more human, but it was obviously botched.
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This I could believe.
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Last time I checked microsoft, google and amazon were located in the US
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Even if they weren't most competitors are multi-national companies. And there would be the same amount of security and checks to make sure the data is secure from other countries' intelligence.
For a good portion of the US Culture, where Capitalism has become beyond king, but a God, (with some groups twisting the words of the bible to make it seem like Capitalism is some sort of moral good cause.) Where making the buck is more important than the public good. Who is to say that the Company Leader a Red Blood
Re: national security (Score:4, Informative)
The Reason (Score:5, Interesting)
From Politico:
The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released Wednesday.
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They're abusing the hell out of the entire general public now instead of just their business partners.
Which is why they're the partner of choice if you're not part of the general public but need to do business with someone. I've never had any trouble with their sales, it's clear what your rights are up front. Find a cheaper option? Feel free to use it. Never had any issue with Microsoft over my career.
Contrast this to Oracle, SAP etc.: find a cheaper option? Who cares, you still need to pay just as much as before. Need less licenses? Forget it, we never take back any license. Oh, and the cheaper option isn'
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Ah... well, my son is in high school and most high schools have a volume license for the kids (in my country at least), and if they don't most universities do (and he also follows courses at the university - which is where I got the license from for E 20,-). And he has an OEM license. So I'm using his license now.
Even if you don't have access yourself, there usually is a kid around who could sell you that license. But maybe in your country MS doesn't do massively discounted volume licenses for schools? Her
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This is a much much more appropriate headline.
So the Defense Department (Score:3)
investigated itself and found itself innocent. Got it.
Microsof sells to execs, leaving devs to pull hair (Score:1)
Let me get this straight (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh please, can we now investigate the investigation, and if that doesn't come to your predefined conclusion, we can always investigate that as well!
Democrats are currently preparing to investigate the administrations response to the Covid-19 pandemic IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PANDEMIC. They apparently are positive there is something there, so positive they have put Adam Schiff on the case.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Probe of the probe? (Score:2)
The Defense Department's watchdog found no evidence that the Pentagon's controversial decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft was the result of interference from President Donald Trump, though it said its probe was limited by the White House.
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The only evidence that led to this investigation was "when Trump publicly expressed concern about the assumption that the contract would go to Amazon.com." In other words, no evidence. Because the President mentioned the bidding process publicly and questioned the "assumption" it would go to Amazon, his critics decided that was a smoking-gun, PROOF of a conspiracy. It wasn't. His critics have been doing this a lot lately, and they typically wind-up with egg on their face - Russian Collusion, Quid Pro Quo,
Media has been looking at this thing wrong (Score:2)
I never understood why the media focused on the fairness of the JEDI contract instead of the necessity of the JEDI contract. Why is it needed? Why can't an employee in government look at the system they need to deploy, research the hosting alternatives that comply with federal rules, and just purchase the cloud solution that best fits their needs? That's the best way to lower long term costs and ensure that you are getting a product that is competitive in the market.
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You have no freakin' idea. The military needs this. Badly.
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The military needs to migrate systems to the cloud. There is no doubt about that. Why do they need a giant contract that gives all DoD wide cloud computing business to a single company?
I have a pretty good idea and have enough experience to know how efficiently the military uses these type of things. I would expect it to be used about as well as similar technologies. They buy supercomputers that go 90% unused because of the red tape involved in using them. They cannot successfully deploy and maintain wifi o
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I never understood why the media focused on the fairness of the JEDI contract instead of the necessity of the JEDI contract. Why is it needed? Why can't an employee in government look at the system they need to deploy, research the hosting alternatives that comply with federal rules, and just purchase the cloud solution that best fits their needs? That's the best way to lower long term costs and ensure that you are getting a product that is competitive in the market.
A lot of the procurement rules are specifically in place to prevent self-dealing and sending business your buddies way. There are a ton of policies and procedures that need to be followed, and you there needs to be a very good explanation to justify why you picked who was picked.
That's is the core difference between a functioning 1st world country and a banana republic.
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If you had the slightest clue regarding the Federal Acquisition Regulations, you wouldn't have bothered asking that question.
If you read the article to the end... (Score:5, Informative)
...which of course no one here will do because TRUMP! and MICROSOFT! you'll see the real issues revolved more around Amazon working to structure the initial request to favor them, they offered jobs to defense department people working on the bids, and so on. In other words, Oracle was pissed because Amazon cheated, and Amazon was pissed because their cheating didn't work.
The issue wasn't that Microsoft won the bid, it's that Microsoft won the bid exclusively - the losers wanted a piece of the pie, and sued when they didn't get any.
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It's entirely possible that, in addition to this, the Amazon bid was rejected for justifiable reasons. That is not what this was about.
Limited investigation (Score:1)
*waves hand* This is not the corruption you&re looking for
Not Allowed to Look Where the Evidence Is (Score:1)
From the article:
But the report also said the White House limited cooperation with the inquiry. The inspector general said the assertion of a “presidential communications privilege” resulted in the Defense Department general counsel instructing officials “not to answer our questions about potential communications between White House and DoD officials about JEDI.”
Since the complaint is about Trump interfering in the selection process, forbidding any evidence about his interference with the selection process would seem to be a problem.
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Since the complaint is about Trump interfering in the selection process, forbidding any evidence about his interference with the selection process would seem to be a problem.
Executive Privilege is a well-known legal construct, employed by nearly every administration I can think of in the past 50 years oftentimes creating fights between the Executive Branch and others. [thehill.com]
Suing your customers to profitability (Score:1)
Wow the little Larry story lives on.
Fuck Oracle too.