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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: 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.