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Cloud The Courts The Military Government Microsoft The Almighty Buck United States

Amazon To Ask Court To Block Microsoft From Working On $10 Billion JEDI Contract (theregister.co.uk) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-about-to-get-ugly dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Amazon Web Services is expecting a decision next month from a U.S. court about whether the brakes will be slammed on the Pentagon's lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract awarded to Microsoft. The filing (PDF), on January 13, sets up the schedule for key dates including February 11, when AWS and Microsoft's lawyers have agreed to expect a court to decide on AWS's motion for a temporary restraining order. A preliminary injunction is also possibly on the cards.

The significance of February -- and the reason for the sped-up negotiated schedule -- is that three days before Valentine's, the $10 billion mega-contract is supposed to begin, and, as the filing notes, "the United States has previously advised AWS and the Court [it] will begin on February 11, 2020," reiterating that "the United States' consistent position that the services to be procured under the Contract are urgently needed in support of national security." Interestingly, the U.S. -- via the Department of Defense -- said in the document that in this specific "bid protest case, it does not intend to file an answer" to AWS's complaint. Microsoft and the U.S. government have agreed to file their motions to dismiss on January 24 -- the same date AWS is flinging out its "temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction" to pull the JEDI light saber away from Microsoft. Amazon's initial formal appeal of the decision pointed much of the blame at President Trump, who has been a public critic of Amazon.

"Should it get the nod, AWS's injunction will 'prevent the issuance of substantive task orders under the contract' despite the U.S.'s position that the services 'are urgently needed in support of national security,'" reports The Register.
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Amazon To Ask Court To Block Microsoft From Working On $10 Billion JEDI Contract More

Amazon To Ask Court To Block Microsoft From Working On $10 Billion JEDI Contract

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  • I though Amazon Employees said no? (Score:3)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @05:45PM (#59621360) Homepage

    Or was that Google employees? Or all of them?

    • It doesn't matter what the "employees" say. It's capitalism. The only goal is shareholder value. If you don't like your overblown paycheck, leave.

  • Since Microsoft deserves a big reward from the government for their NSA support, which went above and beyond any regard for customer privacy and customer security.

    After all Microsoft installed backdoors into Windows and also placed telemetry not only into Windows 10, but also back ported telemetry to older Windows versions via critical Windows Updates that users typically install for security fixes.

    • Why are you so afraid of Telemetry? Microsoft has strict privacy guidelines in place that don't allow collecting personally identifiable information. Do you also complain long and hard about google and the giant sucking sound that is their data collection policies? Microsoft is so much better than Google on the privacy front by any rational measure.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        strict privacy guidelines

        Corporations lie.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by beuges ( 613130 )

        The same people who turn off the telemetry are the ones who complain about crashes or bugs that would have been picked up and fixed by said telemetry.

        This whole telemetry nonsense started because someone noticed that MS outlined that certain keystrokes may be included in telemetry to improve typing predictions and autocorrect, and the M$ brigade turned that into "Microsoft is stealing your passwords and hacking your bank account and stealing your CEO's corporate secrets and giving your dog cancer".

        So now, t

        • Windows 10 basic telemetry collects all applications installed on a machine and all peripherals connected to it. The government can subpoena this information for a fishing expedition. For example, say a company like Nintendo were to file John Doe suits against developers of modern-day unlicensed games for its decades-old classic consoles on some trumped-up unfair competition charge. The company might get a judge to issue a warrant to search Microsoft for telemetry related to popular 6502 assemblers (ASM6 an

    • With regard to telemetry, uou seem to have an overrated opinion of yourself. Nobody cares about your cat photos and underage porn interests. Get over yourself you deluded fool.

    • Thatâ(TM)s why the Telecomâs have been legislated monopolies ever since the patriot act. Thatâ(TM)s why they are allowed to continue to do monopolistic practices against smaller ISPs. Smaller ISPs are less likely to give warrantless wire tap access Thatâ(TM)s why they are allowed to continue to do monopolistic practices against smaller ISPs. Smaller ISPs are less likely to give warrantless wire tap access.

  • May the Force Puns be with us.

  • I love AWS. It's great for a lot of things. However, for the purposes of the JEDI program, Microsoft is the correct choice. Enterprise IT, hardened edge devices, office tools all point to Microsoft as the better choice. Yes, AWS could have done it. But if AWS would have won, it would have taken a bit longer.

    • That's generally not what is being looked at. Both companies have plenty of tools, the primary reason is cost.

      Whether or not Microsoft is subsidizing their cloud products for big enterprise by charging small companies $20+/mo for a mailbox, they are one of the cheaper hosting providers for government and educational contracts (insane deals like you get the whole suite of Microsoft software, just pay for a discounted server usage) unless you want to DIY which the government is big enough to do so, but probab

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      "hardened edge devices" are not typically part of a cloud. Any using those terms in the same sentence as MS is a contradiction.

      • The JEDI contract was very broad and did contain services outside of Azure and AWS. Specifically office tools and edge devices. If the competition was solely compute and object store, AWS would have won. But in this new environment, the government wants to outsource as much IT as they can, and expanded JEDI to include related things.

  • Use the force (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @07:30PM (#59621660)

    If you need to ask the court, you already failed JEDI. Use the force.

  • 3.5 entities (Score:3)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @08:48PM (#59621926)
    There are 3.5 entities that can do this:
    Microsoft
    Amazon
    Google
    Oracle (0.5)

    Whoever won it, however they won, the other 3 would bitch about it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      not really. Oracle definitely couldn't do this, hence why they whined and wanted to see JEDI broken into lots of smaller contracts. Google have neither the skills or experience to do this and were never a realistic option, so you are left with AWS or Azure as the only realistic contenders.
  • Why even have a JEDI contract? Surely the US military is big enough to run internal data centers? Why not buy a more limited capability in certain areas like connectivity and other things where international corporations might have better reach because of servers abroad

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      From the reporting, this is a private cloud, not public. So it is an internal data center. The problem came in either staffing up to do something MS and Amazon can already do and thus duplicate their effort. That also implies DoD could not rely upon their expertise except in ancillary contracts. I'm sure those companies have patents out the wazoo on their imaginary intellectual cloud property.

      Currently, DoD has moved just about all their internal bookkeeping work over to SAP's pathetic ERP. It took 10 years

      • It is both, and more. It primarily for hybrid clouds and most cloud use for internal project. However it also covers the use of cloud systems for public facing web sites like www.dod.mil
    • The government literally outsourced getting to the moon. They outsource pretty much everything, including most information tech. IMHO: MS is a better cultural fit for the govt then AWS anyway.

  • Why not break up the project into smaller pieces. Work out definitions and standards to follow. Connect systems together in a compatible way. Then when one company fucks up you can kick them out and bring in someone else.

    No, instead we'll give MS, AWS, or GC billions of dollars to install a proprietary system that isn't compatible with anything else. Seems like an opportunity to standardize the cloud has been wasted again.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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