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

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.