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from the do-you-get-to-the-cloud-district-very-often dept.
Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract that Amazon and Microsoft were fighting over
The Department of Defense announced Tuesday it's calling off the $10 billion cloud contract that was the subject of a legal battle involving Amazon and Microsoft. But it's also announcing a new contract and soliciting proposals from both cloud service providers where both will likely clinch a reward.
The JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, deal has become one of the most tangled contracts for the DOD. In a press release Tuesday, the Pentagon said that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs."
[...] The agency said it plans to solicit proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft for the contract, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet its needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could also meet its specifications.
Also at c|net, SecurityWeek, Al Jazera, and The Washington Post.
Previously: Amazon, Microsoft Wage War Over the Pentagon's "War Cloud"
Pentagon Beams Down $10bn JEDI Contract to Microsoft: Windows Giant Beats Off Bezos
Pentagon's $10BN Jedi Decision 'Risky for the Country and Democracy,' Says AWS CEO Jassy
Amazon Wins Court Injunction on Controversial JEDI Contract
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:00PM (11 children)
I'd be favouring Amazon: is MS Cloud secure? Nothing else of theirs is.
For $10 billion, couldn't the DOD put together their own cloud? Shouldn't be that hard for that kind of money. Hire some Amazon people or have Amazon build it for them but have it solely within the DOD.
For $10 billion, i'm sure i could cobble something together better than MS could.
Let's get RMS on this right away.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:02AM
You, me, and my senile, lazy cat could build something better than MS could for that kind of money.
(Score: 2) by hopdevil on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:30AM (1 child)
What makes you think AWS is secure?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:53AM
Can't be less secure than a MS product!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:31AM (4 children)
The problem is, this is government. The managers involved must have some backstop to blame when something breaks.
If they built it themselves, they would save a shit-ton of money, but when something breaks and important file X happens to be lost, then it is their ass on the hot frying pan.
Instead, they can pay 10-20x the cost of doing it themselves (note, it is not their money they are spending), and insulate their own asses from that hot frying pan by having the vendor be the backstop of last resort when something breaks and important file X is lost. They can then blame the vendor.
That's why they don't roll their own. They spend other people's money, and by doing so, insulate their own ass from the hot frying pan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @02:54AM (3 children)
I'm not sure if you realize this, but if they wrote it themselves, they're spending the same money. It might be less money to write it, but the money comes from the same place. Now whether it is cheaper to do it themselves and maintain it is another argument.
The rest of your comment (well, actually the whole thing) is ignorant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @03:06AM (2 children)
Posted by someone who's clearly never worked in a govt. department ever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @06:01PM (1 child)
Do you think that it costs money to have a contractor do something, but it is free if the government does it? Do you even know how money works? How appropriations work? Where appropriations come from?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @06:57PM
Not at all. You are massively hallucinating things that were never said in the GP comment.
Here is your hallucination: "free if the government does it" was never stated, anywhere. That was farted out of your mind only. What was stated was: "pay 10-20x the cost of doing it themselves". In order to pay 10x-20x the cost of DIY, there has to be a cost to DIY which is larger than "free".
But anyone who's ever worked in govt. contracting has seen the pattern of CYA by the govt. people.
They will pay 10x-20x or more of the cost of "do it yourself" (note, there is an unstated cost of DIY here, it is just cheaper than having a contractor do the same) just to have "support" from the vendor in the rare instance when something goes wrong, and all to avoid themselves being at risk from the rare "something going wrong".
Anyone who has ever had any even passing contact with the govt. contracting process will have seen this pattern over and over. The fact that your comment implies you've never seen the pattern then heavily implies you have never had any even passing contact with govt. contracting and are therefore just yelling out of your ass.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Socrastotle on Wednesday July 07 2021, @05:32AM (2 children)
This is the thing that seems especially absurd about stuff like this. "Cloud" is little more than a euphemism for remote servers, acting like scalable performance is some amazing new invention. And $10 billion is enough to buy *ten million* servers at $1000 a piece. Of course when you're ordering at that sort of scale, you can also send that price way down through economy of scale. But they're not buying anything at all, they're 100% renting this capability for 10 years. This is effectively enough to build an entire cloud business, from scratch, and still meet the requirements of the contract.
I expect this is same for most of the stuff related to our military industrial complex, but the numbers are less familiar to us - because how many people can genuinely tell you how much it would reasonably cost to make a missile, or an armored truck, or whatever else. In any case, Eisenhower had it right [yale.edu] and we failed to heed his warning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @04:20PM (1 child)
I used to think that, and that is definitely one version of cloud. However, there is a lot more to "cloud" than that. For example, look at AWS Lambda. That's more than just "somebody else's computer" (although of course, it IS somebody else's computer).
I also think you are dramatically underrating how much time and effort it takes to do a Project. Just look at the kickstarter and all the "merely" $10,000 projects which are late and over budget. We all know the "boss comes in and asks you to make a website, it should only take about a week, right?" This is that, only we are the ignorant boss in this case.
As for the "reasonably cost to make a missile," that's all very well documented in how much it does cost. There is a reason comedians can joke about it and newspapers can report on it. As for how much it "should" cost... well, if you think it should cost less, you are welcome to explain your math; or even better, make a new company, undercut the prices by 10%, and become very rich.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday July 07 2021, @05:04PM
Stuff like AWS Lambda is what I was referring to by pretending that dynamically scalable performance is some revolutionary breakthrough. Any site hitting sufficient volume, any video game (like an MMO) with spikes in player count, and countless other applications have built scalable server systems on time frames starting decades ago.
The only reason "cloud computing" exists is because 20 years ago if you bought a new PC, it'd be outdated in 3 months and obsolete in 6. Today? That computer you bought years ago is still 100% fine for all of your tasks. For oversized tech companies that need to generate billions of dollars in revenue just to break even, this was a complete gamechanger. They need rent and the cloud provides it. Nobody in their right mind would ever rent a word processor but "put it on the cloud" and now they're cool paying a monthly fee, forever.
As for "just make a new company and compete." This very article emphasizes the problem in our society. Amazon just "won" this contract like they "won" the Artemis contract. An aerospace company that's existed for 20 years, and has yet to manage to put a single thing into orbit, managed to win a contract to land stuff on the Moon. I have a feeling that we're far closer to the end of our tale than most realize.