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Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirements: * exactly 32gb of RAM. Google promises 30, Azure promises 28. We all know how realistic this isn't. * 150 miles between data centers. This arbitrary number is exactly what Amazon advertises. Others can manage 100 miles, or 130, but this number comes right out of Amazon's advertising package. Not to mention the idiotic idea of a single provider solution. On the other hand, this is a 10 year contract worth about 1% of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft's bottom line in one year. So there's a bit of mountain/molehill going on here

danielvf 8y ago
Google lets you pick an arbitrary amount of RAM and number of vCPU's when creating an instance. You can easily dial up 32GB of RAM. (Or 37.25 gb of RAM if you feel like it that day.) https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/creating-instance-with-custom-machine-type https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/creating-ins...
losvedir 8y ago
Yes, I assumed those were part of this corruption document being shopped around that's discussed in the article. Your points are all the ones raised in that... wapo? nyt? article that you're alluding to, which was discussed here and found to be largely nonsense, IMO. For example, that 28/30/32GB thing is wrong. Are you really saying GCP and Azure don't offer 32GB options? That's a totally standard and common configuration these days.
hw_penfold 8y ago
The 32GB of RAM is silly, because virtual machines, and PCI buses lol. But I suspect the 150 mile marker has some other objective driving factor behind the reasoning for that number, which Amazon incidentally has some advanced insight on, due to other commitments. It probably draws directly from line-of-sight targeting at visible horizons for some sort of specific altitude. Zero altitude, mean sea level gets you maybe a thirty mile shot with conventional artillery, targeting a multi-story building. But then again, rail guns seem to be capable of sending shells or slugs over 200 miles [0], so who knows... [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/futuristic-navy-railgun-with-220-mile-range-closer-to-reality/ https://www.cnet.com/news/futuristic-navy-railgun-with-220-m...
god_bless_texas 8y ago
When the USG writes an RFP/BAA, they already know who they want as the provider.
zellyn 8y ago
> On the other hand, this is a 10 year contract worth about 1% of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft's bottom line in one year. So there's a bit of mountain/molehill going on here. a) Have you ever known an IT project, let alone a government IT project, to end up smaller than or equal to the projected size/cost? Or anything near it? b) If you ever have the “pleasure” of dealing with government IT, you'll see how much easier it is to use a combination of things that has already been “certified” by another part of government. Winning a contract worth 1% of your company's bottom line is huge itself, but as a foot in the door, it's massive.
joncrane 8y ago
It's basically an attempt to sole-source a contract while pretending to be an open competition. Having said that, AWS may realistically be the only provider that can meet their needs.
dastbe 8y ago
Ruggedized is a real word, though. Googling it at the moment gets you definitions and links to laptops, tents, hardware firewalls, etc.
Spooky23 8y ago
1% of Amazon/Google/Microsoft's bottom line is a metric shit-ton of money. It's also, more importantly, opening the door to new markets like banking, insurance and state/local government. Many compute intensive workloads in state/local government remain on-prem beacuse of the lack of Federal guidance, which means higher compliance risk. Silicon Valley drives innovation, but the federal government drives implementation of technology.
sidlls 8y ago
This isn't accidental. Despite all the rules about fair awarding of contracts it's mostly ceremony: the government agents who draft it have a contractor or small set of them in mind when they draft the proposal. It's the same thing that happens when a hiring manager wants to bring a friend in: they'll write the job description such that only their friend qualifies, while wording it in such a way as to give some cover.
ryandrake 8y ago
Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.
- pc86 8y ago
  The folks downvoting you have obviously never been in the rooms when RFPs are drafted. I've been in the room half a dozen times and in almost every case the RFP is written so one particular firm will win the bid, and at most 1-2 other firms are even qualified to respond. Edit: Once while sitting on the private sector side of the table (yes RFPs were often drafted in consultation with the company that would eventually win them, if just informally), a [state] government employee expressed concern over the wording of a particular requirement because he was worried that it would open the door to our primary competitor being qualified to fulfill the bid.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I’ve always recommended that software folks do a short tour of duty at a government contractor, purely for perspective. Its amazing to just watch how that sausage is made and why it’s made. You’ll come away with a renewed appreciation for working in the private sector on products that are made for people.
    - devonkim 8y ago
      Having worked in the sector in the past, I can’t imagine anything I’ve gained for my time in there besides bitterness and cynicism for business, and this attitude has had only negative impact upon my career. On the other hand, I see a lot of parallels with the private sector, specifically in enterprise software. B2C software has its own awfulness but at least it’s a bit sexier than the insane Rube Goldberg Machine of, say, Payroll software. These days, I don’t really see a difference between an IBM, HP and Lockheed, Northrop - they oftentimes compete for the same contracts even.
nmeofthestate 8y ago
This looks like a regurgitation of a Vanity Fair article that I found a bit flimsy. The idea for example that MS are effectively excluded from bidding because they can't achieve the feat of putting 32GB of memory in a server is a bit absurd when you think about it. For a big contract like this I reckon MS techs could probably just about manage it. Have the people drafting the requirements done a bit of copy-n-pasting? Definitely.
dkhenry 8y ago
the concerns you raise are so arbitrary and copied word for word from the vanity fair article that was published a few days ago. FWIW Google, and Microsoft have datacenters well more then 150 miles apart. Also ruggedized is a term used all over the place in military spec's I mean its has its own wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_computer This is the kind of astroturfing that should get your account flagged.
joeax 8y ago
> Not to mention the idiotic idea of a single provider solution. I'm surprised this isn't being discussed more. With a huge $10bil cloud I would think you would want to select a secondary vendor to distribute redundant workloads and data storage. Even if Azure or GCP couldn't meet some requirements today it's a ten-year project and both are expanding quickly. Azure has recently brought online government-specific locations and Google has already has geographically dispersed zones within regions that meet these requirements.
- ccornil2 8y ago
  The Pentagon already has programs like MilCloud in place for redundancy. JEDI is far from the Pentagon's only cloud program. Btw, Google is years away from getting the kind of security certifications you'd need to run a cloud from the Pentagon. Oh, and the Project Maven thing.
wmf 8y ago
I looked at the RFP itself and I disagree with these arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754900
ccornil2 8y ago
You're just restating points from the Vanity Fair article, which was sourced almost exclusively from the dossier. In reality, "ruggedized" is a fairly common DOD term for battlefield IT. The 32g RAM is mostly arbitrary and others, including Microsoft can deliver it. The single provider solution makes sense when you're trying to centralize a fragmented cloud environment.
forapurpose 8y ago
AFAICT the above is from the reporting that DefenseOne is criticizing; that doesn't make it false, but it means we shouldn't take it at face value. It was discussed recently on HN and, IMHO, mostly discredited. For example, the RAM amounts are wrong for Google and Azure, and certainly they have 150 miles between data centers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754079
derefr 8y ago
> "ruggedized" ... [is] a made up word that Amazon uses I'm pretty sure "ruggedized" is a common term for pseudo-milspec computer hardware. You see it on the marketing of regular ol' external USB hard disks quite a lot. If Microsoft and/or Google had a product of the same type, they'd very likely use the same adjective to describe it.

danielvf 8y ago

Google lets you pick an arbitrary amount of RAM and number of vCPU's when creating an instance. You can easily dial up 32GB of RAM. (Or 37.25 gb of RAM if you feel like it that day.) https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/creating-instance-with-custom-machine-type https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/creating-ins...

losvedir 8y ago

Yes, I assumed those were part of this corruption document being shopped around that's discussed in the article. Your points are all the ones raised in that... wapo? nyt? article that you're alluding to, which was discussed here and found to be largely nonsense, IMO. For example, that 28/30/32GB thing is wrong. Are you really saying GCP and Azure don't offer 32GB options? That's a totally standard and common configuration these days.

hw_penfold 8y ago

The 32GB of RAM is silly, because virtual machines, and PCI buses lol. But I suspect the 150 mile marker has some other objective driving factor behind the reasoning for that number, which Amazon incidentally has some advanced insight on, due to other commitments. It probably draws directly from line-of-sight targeting at visible horizons for some sort of specific altitude. Zero altitude, mean sea level gets you maybe a thirty mile shot with conventional artillery, targeting a multi-story building. But then again, rail guns seem to be capable of sending shells or slugs over 200 miles [0], so who knows... [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/futuristic-navy-railgun-with-220-mile-range-closer-to-reality/ https://www.cnet.com/news/futuristic-navy-railgun-with-220-m...

god_bless_texas 8y ago

When the USG writes an RFP/BAA, they already know who they want as the provider.

zellyn 8y ago

> On the other hand, this is a 10 year contract worth about 1% of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft's bottom line in one year. So there's a bit of mountain/molehill going on here. a) Have you ever known an IT project, let alone a government IT project, to end up smaller than or equal to the projected size/cost? Or anything near it? b) If you ever have the “pleasure” of dealing with government IT, you'll see how much easier it is to use a combination of things that has already been “certified” by another part of government. Winning a contract worth 1% of your company's bottom line is huge itself, but as a foot in the door, it's massive.

joncrane 8y ago

It's basically an attempt to sole-source a contract while pretending to be an open competition. Having said that, AWS may realistically be the only provider that can meet their needs.

dastbe 8y ago

Ruggedized is a real word, though. Googling it at the moment gets you definitions and links to laptops, tents, hardware firewalls, etc.

Spooky23 8y ago

1% of Amazon/Google/Microsoft's bottom line is a metric shit-ton of money. It's also, more importantly, opening the door to new markets like banking, insurance and state/local government. Many compute intensive workloads in state/local government remain on-prem beacuse of the lack of Federal guidance, which means higher compliance risk. Silicon Valley drives innovation, but the federal government drives implementation of technology.

sidlls 8y ago

This isn't accidental. Despite all the rules about fair awarding of contracts it's mostly ceremony: the government agents who draft it have a contractor or small set of them in mind when they draft the proposal. It's the same thing that happens when a hiring manager wants to bring a friend in: they'll write the job description such that only their friend qualifies, while wording it in such a way as to give some cover.

ryandrake 8y ago

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

pc86 8y ago
The folks downvoting you have obviously never been in the rooms when RFPs are drafted. I've been in the room half a dozen times and in almost every case the RFP is written so one particular firm will win the bid, and at most 1-2 other firms are even qualified to respond. Edit: Once while sitting on the private sector side of the table (yes RFPs were often drafted in consultation with the company that would eventually win them, if just informally), a [state] government employee expressed concern over the wording of a particular requirement because he was worried that it would open the door to our primary competitor being qualified to fulfill the bid.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  I’ve always recommended that software folks do a short tour of duty at a government contractor, purely for perspective. Its amazing to just watch how that sausage is made and why it’s made. You’ll come away with a renewed appreciation for working in the private sector on products that are made for people.
  - devonkim 8y ago
    Having worked in the sector in the past, I can’t imagine anything I’ve gained for my time in there besides bitterness and cynicism for business, and this attitude has had only negative impact upon my career. On the other hand, I see a lot of parallels with the private sector, specifically in enterprise software. B2C software has its own awfulness but at least it’s a bit sexier than the insane Rube Goldberg Machine of, say, Payroll software. These days, I don’t really see a difference between an IBM, HP and Lockheed, Northrop - they oftentimes compete for the same contracts even.

nmeofthestate 8y ago

This looks like a regurgitation of a Vanity Fair article that I found a bit flimsy. The idea for example that MS are effectively excluded from bidding because they can't achieve the feat of putting 32GB of memory in a server is a bit absurd when you think about it. For a big contract like this I reckon MS techs could probably just about manage it. Have the people drafting the requirements done a bit of copy-n-pasting? Definitely.

dkhenry 8y ago

the concerns you raise are so arbitrary and copied word for word from the vanity fair article that was published a few days ago. FWIW Google, and Microsoft have datacenters well more then 150 miles apart. Also ruggedized is a term used all over the place in military spec's I mean its has its own wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_computer This is the kind of astroturfing that should get your account flagged.

joeax 8y ago

> Not to mention the idiotic idea of a single provider solution. I'm surprised this isn't being discussed more. With a huge $10bil cloud I would think you would want to select a secondary vendor to distribute redundant workloads and data storage. Even if Azure or GCP couldn't meet some requirements today it's a ten-year project and both are expanding quickly. Azure has recently brought online government-specific locations and Google has already has geographically dispersed zones within regions that meet these requirements.

ccornil2 8y ago
The Pentagon already has programs like MilCloud in place for redundancy. JEDI is far from the Pentagon's only cloud program. Btw, Google is years away from getting the kind of security certifications you'd need to run a cloud from the Pentagon. Oh, and the Project Maven thing.

wmf 8y ago

I looked at the RFP itself and I disagree with these arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754900

ccornil2 8y ago

You're just restating points from the Vanity Fair article, which was sourced almost exclusively from the dossier. In reality, "ruggedized" is a fairly common DOD term for battlefield IT. The 32g RAM is mostly arbitrary and others, including Microsoft can deliver it. The single provider solution makes sense when you're trying to centralize a fragmented cloud environment.

forapurpose 8y ago

AFAICT the above is from the reporting that DefenseOne is criticizing; that doesn't make it false, but it means we shouldn't take it at face value. It was discussed recently on HN and, IMHO, mostly discredited. For example, the RAM amounts are wrong for Google and Azure, and certainly they have 150 miles between data centers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17754079

derefr 8y ago

> "ruggedized" ... [is] a made up word that Amazon uses I'm pretty sure "ruggedized" is a common term for pseudo-milspec computer hardware. You see it on the marketing of regular ol' external USB hard disks quite a lot. If Microsoft and/or Google had a product of the same type, they'd very likely use the same adjective to describe it.