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The Courts Cloud Microsoft Technology

Pentagon 'Wishes To Reconsider' $10 Billion JEDI Contract Given To Microsoft (cnn.com) 22

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Business: The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said it wishes to re-evaluate its decision to award the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar cloud contract with Microsoft, signaling a potential victory for Amazon in its protest of the award. The department "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS," it said in a court filing, referring to Amazon Web Services. The agency said it does not anticipate needing to discuss the matter with either AWS or Microsoft.

The contract -- called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI -- involves providing cloud storage of sensitive military data and technology, such as artificial intelligence, to the Department of Defense, and could result in revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon Web Services lost the contract to Microsoft's Azure cloud business in October, a decision that surprised many industry experts given Amazon's leadership in the industry. Amazon filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision, arguing that it was politically motivated by President Donald Trump's dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns.
"We look forward to complete, fair, and effective corrective action that fully insulates the re-evaluation from political influence and corrects the many issues affecting the initial flawed award," Amazon Web Services said in a statement.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said it supports the "decision to reconsider a small number of factors as it is likely the fastest way to resolve all issues and quickly provide the needed modern technology to people across our armed forces."
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Pentagon 'Wishes To Reconsider' $10 Billion JEDI Contract Given To Microsoft

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  • Afraid they are (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @03:52PM (#59827630)
    I really want to see the discovery in this case.
    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      It's like an open bidding war for the bribes now. Wonder if one of them ends up giving the service away for free, or gets off easy by just sufffing some pockets with tens of millions.

  • by cusco ( 717999 ) <<brian.bixby> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday March 13, 2020 @04:11PM (#59827714)

    My co-irker's previous gig was network support for Azure, his first words when he heard about the award were, "They're going to regret that."

    Azure is probably the best in the world at hosting enormous heaps of Windows VMs, but that's not what the Pentagon needs. They have mainframes that are so old they're buying parts for them on eBay, and desperately need to migrate that load, along with some of the most gigantic GIS databases on the planet. AWS has its 'Snowmobile' device specifically to migrate exabytes of data, while Azure thinks you can throw a couple of SANs in a truck (hint: it doesn't work). AWS already has the necessary policies, procedures and facilities in place (which is why they got the CIA contract), Azure is going to need to build all of that from scratch.

    I'd bet that there are a bunch of Azure staff who are praying that this contract goes away.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 13, 2020 @05:02PM (#59827878)

      What the actual fuck are you talking about?

      Azure is built almost entirely on Linux, not "Windows VMs", and it's well known that AWS' strength is IaaS, whilst Azure's is PaaS. If we're talking about hosting VMs therefore, then that describes AWS far better. That's precisely why AWS has had such a hard time charging by anything less than the hour - because their cloud infrastructure is older, and more antiquated than Microsoft's - Amazon have struggled to charge by the minute or second precisely because they're so reliant on VMs that take longer than that to spin up in the first place.

      The whole reason Azure is such a strong contender, despite entering the market about a decade after Amazon is precisely because it had the advantage of learning from AWS' limitations. Azure has the second mover advantage, and offers many better solutions in many areas than AWS as a result and that's precisely why it's been closing ground on AWS at a decent pace.

      You're literally talking shit and couldn't be more wrong about the way the competing clouds are built; you're making Microsoft's cloud out to be some legacy cobbled together thing, but it's the exact opposite; it came after AWS and is far more modern and less bound by Amazon's legacy setup for AWS as a result; again, that's why Azure's PaaS offering blows AWS' away and why you can typically be more agile in Azure (i.e. getting charged by the minute and second long before AWS was able to).

      AWS is great for some things, whilst Azure does compute and most PaaS offerings cheaper, AWS is slightly cheaper for big data, but AWS is also the weakest of the three main clouds in terms of AI offerings which is a key part of what they want - Google tops in that area, followed by Azure, followed by AWS.

      If you want to build something like Netflix where you have to shift a lot of data around then AWS is typically the better choice, but the Pentagon need significantly more than just doing that, they need a whole bunch of intelligent compute, and that's where Azure was inevitably always going to be able to pinch the contract because it's simply cheaper and better in that area.

      • by cusco ( 717999 ) <<brian.bixby> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday March 13, 2020 @05:22PM (#59827990)

        Interesting take. That's almost the exact opposite of what my coworkers who have worked in both orgs opine. (Full disclosure: I work in physical security for Amazon and formerly for AWS.) I sent the CNN article to the one who left Azure most recently, and his response was, "While I was there it was constant duct tape and praying to keep FedNet alive." (copy/paste)

      • by gtall ( 79522 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @05:58PM (#59828128)

        No, the reason for DoD even considering MS is because the rank and file run on MS software and do not know anything else. Their IT people had other ideas and hence Amazon was the better choice. Then Trump got it in his head that since Bezos owns the WPost that Bezos must be telling the WPost to write unflattering pieces on him. However, Bezos doesn't and those unflattering pieces almost wrote themselves because the entire alleged Administration is bush league and inept.

        So Trump leans on the SecDef who found a way to "recuse" himself because of his son's relationship with IBM, and IBM was never even in the running for that contract. That allowed DoD to acquiesce to Trump's demand that DoD screw Bezos without dirtying the SecDef and having to face Congress as just another Trump mouthpiece like Barr.

      • " That's precisely why AWS has had such a hard time charging by anything less than the hour - because their cloud infrastructure is older, and more antiquated than Microsoft's - "

        EC2 launches new hardware quite regularly, and apparently uses the same hardware internally. So I don't understand what is "antiquated". Can you elaborate?

        "Amazon have struggled to charge by the minute or second precisely because they're so reliant on VMs that take longer than that to spin up in the first place."

        EC2 launched per-se

    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      It's also worth pointing out that AWS currently operates datacenters for the CIA. Perhaps MS also has a proven capability to work with top secret data centers? Or is that not relevant here?

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Probably not relevant. DoD needs basic business level operations which they no longer have the inhouse expertise to manage. Their organization has become too complex. The secret stuff will only be a small part of it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Microsoft's FedNet is much smaller than AWS's GovCloud, and has only been certified to host FedRAMP data for less than a year. AWS has two data centers devoted specifically for Federal government work, both certified to hold classified data, in addition to their normal more distributed offerings for orgs that don't need that level of service. I can't speak authoritatively about Azure, but I don't think that they have any government-specific facilities currently.

        I do physical security (key cards, alarms, c

  • by notdecnet ( 6156534 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @05:20PM (#59827978)
    No one in their right mind keep secrets in the “Cloud”. This has more to do with financial donation on Capitol hill. Money flows to the politicians and revenue flows back to the corporations.
  • MS staff kept all the PRISM secrets and work will with the US mil, police and gov at all levels.
    MS is a perfect fit for the US mil. Large projects, decades of spending, busy work.
    A consumer GUI troops, contractors, gov, the mil are ready for and have used in the past.
  • No doubt after serious reconsideration the Pentagon will award the contract to Microsoft just as before. No organization on Earth is better at generating paperwork to justify a decision made on a Trump golf course
  • Leave the contract in place. If you want to investigate knock yourself out. If you find something disallow $company from bidding on government contracts for, I dunno, 10 years.

    For better or worse you made a decision. Stick with it, and get the job done. Quit sticking your dicks in the mud and seeing who can run in circles the fastest, that gets us nowhere.

God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein

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