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Why would such a massively important backbone of US defense want to rely on only a single provider? It should be using all 3 of the major players (or others) an

Why would such a massively important backbone of US defense want to rely on only a single provider? It should be using all 3 of the major players (or others) and even some on premise stuff. This seems like a nightmare waiting to happen, and crony capitalism at its finest. The fact that Amazon says in the article that using fail overs to other providers is some hassle...is just amazing.

Spivak 8y ago
Because government contracts of this size play by different rules. They're not using Amazon as a customer like normal companies -- they're hiring Amazon the firm to build something specific for them.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  A government contract where the sole company that can ever win the contract also says that fail overs to other providers is bad. So if Amazon goes down, the DoD is shit out of luck. I don't see how that's not a national security problem. Not only that, but after the $10 Billion is expended the DoD is vendor locked. How people don't see this as a major problem/cronyism is baffling. The vendor lock itself is bad enough.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    Hows it any different from every other single provider contract ever? Everything's in an IBM DC (or three), they fuck something up? It's down.
    - partiallypro 8y ago
      Because in this case it relates to national security and if the provider goes down the US is potentially at more risk than it would have been if it had multi-vendor fail overs. I can understand it not being justified for some government programs or companies due to expense or impracticality, but the DoD has a massive budget and a huge pool of resources. Not having multi-vendor fail overs just seems irresponsible given the stakes.
      - deadbunny 8y ago
        Basically every mil contract is single provider. Doesn't matter who the provider.
        partiallypro 8y ago
        Having a single provider of Lockheed for 1 jet is different than an entire infrastructure that can fail.
julianozen 8y ago
Amazon employee here so I am biased. While multi-cloud might give you more redundancy, it: a) prevents you from using any of the custom features that many each service great (for instance lambda, aurora, dynamodb or in the case of google cloud, some of their ML tech). Might as well use on-prem if you’re not going to using AWS/Azure/GSuite feature on top of IaaS b) requires you to set up multiple alarms, logs, metrics, on different providers which can themselves be the source of bugs c) doesn’t provide you much more availability/redundancy them simply using multiple regions d)while this may give you long term negotiating power, you will likely just save more money with long term exclusive contracts. The DOD will also likely never be 100% migrated to AWS and there will probably be more contracts
- webmaven 8y ago
  > d)while this may give you long term negotiating power, you will likely just save more money with long term exclusive contracts. Uh, This would be true, if one expected prices (and technology) to remain stable, but since that isn't the case, maintaining re-negotiating power is quite a bit more advantageous than you imply.
  - julianozen 8y ago
    Yeah not sure. I think it depends on the contracts. Maintaining infrastructure on 3 cloud providers that don’t work the same is costly. All of these services provide pretty steep discounts (as a percentage of original costs) for customers who are able to provide accurate capacity forecasts and make long term commitments. And the while the “technology gets cheaper” argument is true, I believe it is generally understood that while AWS/Azure/Google can use this trend at the scale they operate at (and then pass the savings to the customers), most cloud customers would spend more money hiring additional engineers to maintain more complicated infrastructure then they would save trying to take advantage of this trend.
    - webmaven 8y ago
      > Maintaining infrastructure on 3 cloud providers that don’t work the same is costly. Maintaining the ability to move between providers is not at all the same as maintaining your systems on all three simultaneously. > All of these services provide pretty steep discounts (as a percentage of original costs) for customers who are able to [...] make long term commitments. Sure. But the question is, at the end of that commitment, are you locked in to that provider by the cost of having to redevelop for a different provider (which gives your existing provider an unearned pricing advantage), or can you switch providers because you had the foresight to make sure your deployments were portable? > most cloud customers would spend more money hiring additional engineers to maintain more complicated infrastructure then they would save trying to take advantage of this trend. Sure, because most cloud customers are small and are drawn by the prospect of not maintaining infrastructure at all (in other words, they're actually SaaS customers by preference), and the non-portability of G-Suite's integration with GCP as compared with Office 365's integration with Azure is relatively immarterial compared to the non-portability between G-Suite and Office 365. But (right now, at least) at the scale where you are for example selecting a cloud orchestration solution, going for the one that provides better portability between different providers with an abstraction layer doesn't really impose additional costs (because you'll need to develop internal expertise in whatever solution you choose).
robbiemitchell 8y ago
This was addressed a bit in a separate article recently: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/capitalbusiness/pentagon-doubles-down-on-single-cloud-strategy-for-10-billion-contract/2018/08/05/352cfee8-972b-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/capitalbusin... The DoD intends to use multiple cloud providers overall, across multiple projects —- but not within this single contract. The CIA already has a $600M contract with AWS.

Spivak 8y ago

Because government contracts of this size play by different rules. They're not using Amazon as a customer like normal companies -- they're hiring Amazon the firm to build something specific for them.

partiallypro 8y ago
A government contract where the sole company that can ever win the contract also says that fail overs to other providers is bad. So if Amazon goes down, the DoD is shit out of luck. I don't see how that's not a national security problem. Not only that, but after the $10 Billion is expended the DoD is vendor locked. How people don't see this as a major problem/cronyism is baffling. The vendor lock itself is bad enough.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  Hows it any different from every other single provider contract ever? Everything's in an IBM DC (or three), they fuck something up? It's down.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    Because in this case it relates to national security and if the provider goes down the US is potentially at more risk than it would have been if it had multi-vendor fail overs. I can understand it not being justified for some government programs or companies due to expense or impracticality, but the DoD has a massive budget and a huge pool of resources. Not having multi-vendor fail overs just seems irresponsible given the stakes.
    - deadbunny 8y ago
      Basically every mil contract is single provider. Doesn't matter who the provider.
      - partiallypro 8y ago
        Having a single provider of Lockheed for 1 jet is different than an entire infrastructure that can fail.

julianozen 8y ago

Amazon employee here so I am biased. While multi-cloud might give you more redundancy, it: a) prevents you from using any of the custom features that many each service great (for instance lambda, aurora, dynamodb or in the case of google cloud, some of their ML tech). Might as well use on-prem if you’re not going to using AWS/Azure/GSuite feature on top of IaaS b) requires you to set up multiple alarms, logs, metrics, on different providers which can themselves be the source of bugs c) doesn’t provide you much more availability/redundancy them simply using multiple regions d)while this may give you long term negotiating power, you will likely just save more money with long term exclusive contracts. The DOD will also likely never be 100% migrated to AWS and there will probably be more contracts

webmaven 8y ago
> d)while this may give you long term negotiating power, you will likely just save more money with long term exclusive contracts. Uh, This would be true, if one expected prices (and technology) to remain stable, but since that isn't the case, maintaining re-negotiating power is quite a bit more advantageous than you imply.
- julianozen 8y ago
  Yeah not sure. I think it depends on the contracts. Maintaining infrastructure on 3 cloud providers that don’t work the same is costly. All of these services provide pretty steep discounts (as a percentage of original costs) for customers who are able to provide accurate capacity forecasts and make long term commitments. And the while the “technology gets cheaper” argument is true, I believe it is generally understood that while AWS/Azure/Google can use this trend at the scale they operate at (and then pass the savings to the customers), most cloud customers would spend more money hiring additional engineers to maintain more complicated infrastructure then they would save trying to take advantage of this trend.
  - webmaven 8y ago
    > Maintaining infrastructure on 3 cloud providers that don’t work the same is costly. Maintaining the ability to move between providers is not at all the same as maintaining your systems on all three simultaneously. > All of these services provide pretty steep discounts (as a percentage of original costs) for customers who are able to [...] make long term commitments. Sure. But the question is, at the end of that commitment, are you locked in to that provider by the cost of having to redevelop for a different provider (which gives your existing provider an unearned pricing advantage), or can you switch providers because you had the foresight to make sure your deployments were portable? > most cloud customers would spend more money hiring additional engineers to maintain more complicated infrastructure then they would save trying to take advantage of this trend. Sure, because most cloud customers are small and are drawn by the prospect of not maintaining infrastructure at all (in other words, they're actually SaaS customers by preference), and the non-portability of G-Suite's integration with GCP as compared with Office 365's integration with Azure is relatively immarterial compared to the non-portability between G-Suite and Office 365. But (right now, at least) at the scale where you are for example selecting a cloud orchestration solution, going for the one that provides better portability between different providers with an abstraction layer doesn't really impose additional costs (because you'll need to develop internal expertise in whatever solution you choose).

robbiemitchell 8y ago

This was addressed a bit in a separate article recently: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/capitalbusiness/pentagon-doubles-down-on-single-cloud-strategy-for-10-billion-contract/2018/08/05/352cfee8-972b-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/capitalbusin... The DoD intends to use multiple cloud providers overall, across multiple projects —- but not within this single contract. The CIA already has a $600M contract with AWS.