Amazon is headed for court to contest the surprise decision to hand Microsoft the $10bn US Department of Defense IT supply contract.
Jeff Bezos' retail-cum-cloud empire alleges that Microsoft won because of "political influence" and "unmistakable bias". The company has also accused the US defence department of failing to run a fair procurement contest for the 10-year single-supplier deal.
Amazon's cloud biz, AWS, was perceived for a long time as the frontrunner in the race to win the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, ahead of Microsoft and Oracle. However, US president Donald Trump's long list of supposed enemies includes the Amazon CEO, mainly because he objects to coverage of the presidency by the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
The cloud giant has not yet filed papers in court, but has informed the US government and Microsoft of its intention to do so.
[...] Microsoft declined to comment.
One question still to be answered is: what will last longer and prove the most expensive? The 10-year, $10bn JEDI contract or the associated court action?
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Sorry, Amazon, Microsoft wins JEDI contract again upon re-evaluation:
After a monthslong[sic] investigation by the Pentagon, the Department of Defense said Friday that it's sticking with Microsoft for its $10 billion cloud computing contract. And Amazon is not happy.
As a quick refresher: Microsoft was originally awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract in October 2019 after facing off against other tech giants like IBM, Oracle, and Amazon in a fierce, yearslong[sic] bidding process. The contract would provide cloud computing services to the U.S. Army and is valued at as much as $10 billion for services rendered over a decade.
[...] The agency went on to say that this decision does not mean work will begin immediately since February's temporary injunction still stands, but it is "eager to begin" working with Microsoft to modernize the Pentagon's IT infrastructure.
In response, Amazon's cloud-computing arm, Amazon Web Services, tore into the DoD and Trump in a scathing post to its public sector blog, calling the government's investigation "nothing more than an attempt to validate a flawed, biased, and politically corrupted decision."
[...] You can read the statement in full here. TLDR: Amazon is royally pissed and the government can pry this contract from its cold, dead hands.
[...] In short, it appears the JEDI saga still isn't over so grab some popcorn and settle in, folks. This one's shaping up to be a doozy.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:11AM (3 children)
Will it be all AMD, all Intel, all NVIDIA (unlikely), Intel + NVIDIA, or AMD + NVIDIA?
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
AMD would have been out of the running a couple of years ago. However, even Azure offers AMD options now: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/ [microsoft.com]
Graphics cards for computational purposes is so situational I am doubtful it will be a large part of this particular contract. Though, who knows? Maybe the government needs more number crunching done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:59AM
Yes, AMD is winning in all categories now (faster and cheaper with lower power consumption). There is no reason to use Intel besides inertia, but this is the US government which is famous for inertia.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:35AM
Or AMD + Intel. Lots of chips from both companies.
Microsoft got slightly custom Zen+ chips for Surface so there's that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @02:36AM (1 child)
Large DOD contracts (and small!) are regularly protested.
This is nothing out of the ordinary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:12AM
From what I've heard, what is somewhat unusual is that this contract has no provision to wait, e.g., 90 days to allow protests to be addressed. I'm told that M$ has already starting working overtime with DoD to make it impractical for a challenge to the process to roll back and start over again with a different vendor. I'm suspicious, but have no facts either way, that M$ heavily leveraged their existing entrenchment in DoD desktop/server software to support their cloud services bid (wouldn't it be a shame if your Windows 10 license fees doubled when you need to add-on "connect to services on third-party cloud CALs").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @08:12AM (1 child)
I hear that the NSA has a new security project coming up: Systems Infrastructure Technology Hacking (SITH). Might have better luck with that one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday November 17 2019, @11:22AM
Or, Windows is: So Hackable It's True (SHIT)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday November 17 2019, @12:14PM (3 children)
Scuba diver ironing underwater - US Army
Approaching shark in background - 'Cloud' services operated by the armies of other countries in other countries
Heck at least aws is kindof american such that the cia can lol trust them with a huge contract, meaning it is the cia enough that the cia trusts the admins of aws won't spy on the cia.
But microsoft, this is trump's kindof company, crypto zionist, front backdoors, back backdoors, the perfect company for global totalitarianism.
Words fail, I must resort to memes:
https://coinsh.red/ipfs/QmUVrJvZ2iEgDKNwbjrfTSZC1gPjhc5tBUYJoKBZwkzuCS [coinsh.red]
https://coinsh.red/ipfs/QmPYiTAmBwuCo8hjXCdq9MY7eSTufKidgQC5nCB7diLUVP [coinsh.red]
Some of my best work, enjoy.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Sunday November 17 2019, @05:08PM (1 child)
Every time I read one of your posted comments, I am reminded of reading the newspaper articles in SimCity 2000.
- D
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday November 18 2019, @04:22PM
This may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
I had to jog my memory, and I had a very long belly laugh here that was much needed.
http://blog.cocoia.com/2007/creative-interaction/ [cocoia.com]
I will continue. You might enjoy my homepage and other memes. Posting more to my journal now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @05:13PM
The ironing is strong in this one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:53PM
Microsoft has a much longer history of involvement with the USG than Amazon does, and not only that,
and I would unironically trust that it's less likely for MS servers to BSOD than it would be for Bozos to straight up sell copies of the servers to the highest bidder.