US Military Signs Modernization Deal With Microsoft 228
Dupple writes with news that Microsoft has signed an agreement with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and the Defense Information Systems Agency to modernize the software those organizations use. According to Microsoft, the deal will cover 75% of all Department of Defense personnel, and bring to them the latest versions of SharePoint, Office, and Windows. The deal awards Microsoft $617 million, which is after discounts to the software totaling in the tens of millions. Interestingly, DISA's senior procurement executive said, "[The agreement] recognizes the shift to mobility. Microsoft is committed to making sure that the technology within the agreement has a mobile-first focus, and we expect to begin to take advantage of Microsoft’s mobile offerings as part of our enterprise mobility ecosystem."
FML (Score:4, Interesting)
and the Navy paid $700M earlier (Score:4, Interesting)
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How is that encouraging any sort of good volume pricing or agreements if each division (Military Branch) is negotiating its own separate deal with Microsoft individually. If there's anyone that could screw with the military contracting officers, it's IBM and Microsoft.
Then again, this kind of volume license contract could be what they had to do in order to be able to keep their downgrade capability to keep XP running on their older personal computers.
Discount? (Score:5, Interesting)
The deal awards Microsoft $617 million, which is after discounts to the software totaling in the tens of millions.
So... between $20 and $90 million out of a $617 million deal is 3.2%-14%. The most powerful military force in the world, and that's the best discount they could get? For sharepoint?
Single Source is a Security Risk (Score:5, Interesting)
I am in the semiconductor business. Of course we know how heavily dependent the military is on this technology. But yet, often times when a piece of military hardware is built, there is a requirement for a second source. This is in case the first source should falter in delivery. It's a security issue based on that. Why is this any different with software? If the military were to commit themselves to free open source software, they would be more soundly in control of their own security and destiny. This Microsoft deal doesn't make sense at all.
Re:Hope it's not windows 8 (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to be a bit of a devil's advocate:
There is one good thing about Windows 8 -- Metro apps, or whatever MS calls them now (Microsoft Store Apps.)
These store their files in a restricted subdirectory in the user's homedir, and run in an extremely limited security context.
What I want to see is a real Web browser as a Metro app. This way, if the browser or an add-on running under it gets taken over, it can't get to a full user context, much less get control of the machine [1]. Same with an IMAP client. This is not to replace existing MUAs and Web browsers, but a restricted place to browse privately [2] with less exposure possible to malicious software.
I'm not a fan of workflow with Metro apps, but I do like the security contexts that limit things. It doesn't solve everything, but it is a good tool in a toolbox.
[1]: Nothing is impossible, but restricted contexts are a good start.
[2]: Pr0n sites, most likely.