Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 10 2019, @11:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the sour-grapes? dept.

Why was Amazon heading to court to challenge the US Department of Defense's decision to award its $10bn winner-takes-all JEDI IT project to Microsoft rather than to, well, AWS?

“We’re in the middle of an act of litigation so there’s a limited amount I can say about it, but … we feel pretty strongly that it was not adjudicated fairly,” said Jassy. “If you do a truly objective and detailed apples to apples comparison of the platforms you don’t end up in the spot where that decision was made.

“Most of our customers tell us that we’re a couple of years ahead both with regard to functionality and maturity. I think we ended up with a situation where there was significant political interference.” Jassy claimed that having “a sitting president who’s willing to share openly his disdain for a company,” namely the Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon, makes it “really difficult for government agencies including the DoD to make an objective decision without fear of reprisal.”

Bezos also owns The Washington Post, which has drawn Trump's ire in the past, as well as Amazon.

Does Jassy have a point or is this just sour grapes?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:14AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:14AM (#930914)

    Do we really want our soldiers relying on a system that could stop in the middle of a battle for an update?

    I hate to tell you this but we already have that. Take out Redmond and you will instantly bring DoD communications to its knees. Now, I'm sure that many of you will be filled with pure joy at the thought of nuking Redmond from orbit. But...if and when that happens there are going to be a lot of our soldiers on the front lines of battle who will suddenly find themselves without critical communications infrastructure. I fear that it's going to take some sort of Pearl Harbor type scenario before we get key people in Congress and the Pentagon to wake up to the hazard this poses.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:46AM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 11 2019, @04:46AM (#930957) Journal

    This is second-hand information, so it's OK to doubt it, but:
    It's not just Microsoft. All sorts of tech contracts are being let that require that the soldiers who need the stuff working *NOW* aren't allowed to fix it when it breaks, and also don't have a large supply of spares. Often the contract specifies that the stuff has to be sent back to the repair center, and they'll ship it back when they have it fixed.

    Sometimes the stuff really can't be fixed on site, in which case it should have been rejected as unfit for purpose. Sometimes it's just a legal requirement. In which case it should have been rejected as unfit for purpose.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:33PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:33PM (#931230) Journal

      Yeah, that's pretty much the way it has always been.

      It depends upon what the malfunction is as to at what level/where the repairs can or must be carried out at, ranging from Field-level to Depot. Depot is the highest level, and means it's sent to the repair depot responsible to be forwarded to manufacturer, rebuilt at depot, or lossed. For any piece of gear there is some maintenance manual which contains a table specifying what level a given repair is to be carried out at. For a lot of gear G.I. Joe or Johnny Dumbass isn't just risking his or her neck on his or her skill, but that of others as well, so they don't want Joe or Johnny trying to "fix" it. So there's a lot of repairs which are specified as depot level.

      As to "don't have a large supply of spares," that is either the fault of the DoD testing apparatus or for procurement (read budget, read Congress/Executive) for not ensuring adequate supply in the face of breakage.

      --
      This sig for rent.