Pentagon Asks Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for Bids on New Cloud Contracts

The U.S. General Services Administration said Friday that the Defense Department has solicited bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for cloud contracts. From a report: The outreach comes after the Pentagon set aside a highly contested $10 billion contract that Microsoft had won and Amazon had challenged. The value of the new contracts is not known, but the Defense Department estimates it could run into the multiple billions of dollars. The new effort, known as Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, appears like it will bolster the top global cloud infrastructure providers, Amazon and Microsoft, although it could also provide more credibility to two smaller entities.

"The Government anticipates awarding two IDIQ contracts -- one to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and one to Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) -- but intends to award to all Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that demonstrate the capability to meet DoD's requirements," the GSA said in its announcement. An indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ, contract includes an indefinite amount of services for a specific period of time.

Wait for it..

[e3m4n]

Wait for Amazon to file suit, holding up the project, and crying like a little bitch, when they get passed over on their bid.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it could be even worse this time given they've thrown joke clouds into the mix like Oracle who are also known to be lawsuit mad.

Oh sweet merciful satan

[RightwingNutjob]

First they have bespoke/in-house software (50s to 80s)

Then they get into the commercial turn-key software craze (90s)

Then it's all about leveraging open source ,by pumping money into redhat and ibm of course (2000s and 2010s)

Now they're back to bespoke solutions for everything.

Wait for this shitstorm to play out and watch the pentagon rediscover shrink-wrapped and oss again by 2040.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the problem? That organisations should stick with one approach for all eternity regardless of changing realities and understanding?

The only point I can really put out of your post is that change is apparently bad. Um, okay.

20 years is a long time in tech and not an unreasonable timeframe in which to change systems and change approach.

Re: Oh sweet merciful satan

[RightwingNutjob]

Failure to learn from past mistakes is not made up for with "change" that merely retreads different iterations of those mistakes.

Re: Oh sweet merciful satan

[drinkypoo]

What an ironic thing for a conservative to say, when your whole political plan is to preserve the mistakes of the past forever.

Re:

[sweepkick]

You just explained the very essence of IT.

If things didn't constantly change, ebb, flow.... vendors wouldn't get rich, the IT technical jobs landscape would be much smaller, and it would be difficult for mid-managers to justify their jobs.

There's only so much change that can happen before you are back to where you were before. You just call it something else. :)

Joint Warfare Cloud Capability

[frank_adrian314159]

I didn't know clouds were so dangerous we need a joint warfare capability against them. On the other hand, Bezos does have his own space force now...

JEDI failed. Jedi Warfare Cloud City will win.

[bustinbrains]

They'll all get contracts. Then DoD will simply use the one that they actually like the best. No one can complain because it's open-ended with no guarantees.

I'm going to guess that the cloud is "necessary" because the young padawans in the military want to deploy Docker containers loaded up with NodeJS.

Re:

[parityshrimp]

Either that or one of the requirements is the new cloud infrastructure must somehow support JOVIAL.

Ask IBM too...

[martiniturbide]

Came on, let's make this poker game more interesting.

Pentagon Cloud Security

[witz2]

Some people must be eager to do some real pentesting into Pentagon Cloud security. With gloves off.