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Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud'

151 points by dbg31415 7y ago

SamReidHughes 7y ago
It is strange to me that there are even rules about this. Imagine if we decided to halt the Manhattan Project for a few months so the courts could work out whether contracts were properly awarded.
- godelzilla 7y ago
  Millions of people might not have died unnecessarily. The horror!
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    Nukes only killed a couple hundred thousand.
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    Actually, millions of people would have died unnecessarily. Japan wouldn’t surrender, and was planning to slowly sacrifice its entire population to bleed the allied invasion of the home islands. Somehow people forget Japan started the war in the Pacific and murdered tens of millions of Chinese, Koreans, and other Asian civilians in the process.
reallydontask 7y ago
This reminds me of a time where the Department of Work and Pensions botched a bid for a Universal Jobmatch system and ended up awarding the contract, to methods consulting, re-tendering the contract and paying close to £1m to methods consulting I would not be surprised if something similar happened here, although the payout would likely be far higher and I'm in no way comparing Methods Consulting to Microsoft.
hpoe 7y ago
Didn't Oracle just sue the DoD claiming they wrote the requirements in such a way that only Amazon could get it?
- robmiller 7y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me. I heard the person who wrote the legislation left when they were completed and took a job with AWS.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    The British civil servant who championed the use of AWS by the British government took a job with AWS after the deal was done. It is shameful.
- sp332 7y ago
  I hadn't heard of that side of the argument. According to https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/oracle-argues-jedi-defense-contract-bid-tarnished-by-amazon-conflicts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/oracle-argues-jedi-defense-c..., Oracle had complained about this before, then kinda dropped it, then revived it one week after Amazon launched their new complaint.
- robbyt 7y ago
  Ironic, because normally Oracle are the ones doing this
- partiallypro 7y ago
  My view is that Amazon did help write the requirements, and then lost the contract thinking it was in the bag. So now they are taking it to court because they were shocked their in the bag contract wasn't rewarded.
- j-c-hewitt 7y ago
  The court ruled in favor of the government: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv1880-102-0 https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv... There were some improprieties found as it relates to the conduct of Amazon's agents and in the RFP process, but it got the greenlight overall. This might be the problem with Amazon litigating the changes to the RFP process. Oracle already litigated the previous version of the RFP. It looks like the process changed in part to head off the perception that it was rigged in favor of Amazon. Now, Amazon alleges that this re-rigging made it rigged out of its favor. So, it went: Oracle: "This is rigged for Amazon! These requirements can only be met by Amazon! Also it's unfair that it can only be won by a single entity!" Judge: "The Pentagon didn't want to have multiple clouds because it would defeat the reason for the project. We didn't find that the RFP was corrupt to the point of breaking the law, but it was definitely sort of corrupt, particularly in the case of the dude who was on the committee creating the RFP while simultaneously selling a startup to Amazon while simultaneously telling the Pentagon that he wasn't breaking the law and telling Amazon he was not breaking the law, but he was totally breaking the law." This obviously put the Pentagon between the rock of leaving the RFP as-is and being sued again for corruption and the hard place of changing the RFP and being accused of improper political influence. If Trump had avoided taking a public stance on the issue it would have been much better for the Pentagon's situation, as this now creates a situation in which no matter what the Pentagon decided they could be credibly accused of corruption.
arkitaip 7y ago
I wonder how often system implementation delays are caused by excessive government contract litigation? How much does it cost taxpayers because Amazon or Oracle are litigious?
ckastner 7y ago
What if Microsoft were to assume and any all risk from a possible judgment not in their favor?
foolfoolz 7y ago
this kind of stuff is such an american way of doing things. - bid for contracts that enables government to make some real progress - lose - sue because you lost, claim winner can’t start until your suit is over - introduce 1-2 year delay of waiting while your complaint is processed and people wonder why china gets things done in a quarter of the time
- lagadu 7y ago
  Yeah, they get things done because they're a totalitarian, completely opaque regime. I'll take western governments with all their faults and inneficiencies, thank you.
  - rahuldottech 7y ago
    Plenty of western governments get lots done efficiently. Parent comment was about US practices.
    - castlecrasher2 7y ago
      Did you even read the last sentence of the parent comment?
      - rahuldottech 7y ago
        Did you read the first?
        castlecrasher2 7y ago
        I did. I mean, I /could/ focus on only one sentence of a post, argue from that point alone, and insist the conversation hinge on that point but that would be ignorant and rude.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    Also this is completely ignoring that in China the government would have picked Microsoft over Amazon, and there would be zero legal recourse because there is no rule of law there. And as Chinese subjects we would not be allowed to say anything critical of the government because it threatens the "national dignity." Even if it's obviously cronyism perpetrated by the leadership, like if Microsoft in this case were owned by one of the party officials or a relative. We would be expected to trust our government explicitly even in cases where we personally know that it's wrong. So sure, you can get a lot done in those cases, but it might not be the right things to do, and there's zero process for remediation except to hope that another party leader takes over and changes it for you. So when anyone says China is totalitarian this is what is meant and why the US is ideologically opposed to China and Chinese rule.
CrankyBear 7y ago
This is standard procedure in these kind of contract fights. I get so sick and tired of government IT contract squabbles. They drag on for years, little usually changes, and, in the meantime the work doesn't get done.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  I'm not sure how standard procedure it is for the President to intervene in a down-the-chain contract decision though.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    The question shouldn't be whether it's standard, but if the office has the authority to intervene. You can then work backwards to legislative hot fixes to governance deficiencies.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      Unfortunately, the question of how much authority the office has depends on which party currently occupies the office and who's asking.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Which is why it's important to craft policy of strong checks and balances, regardless of which party has a majority. Today you're the Rebellion, tomorrow you're the Empire. Design systems resilient to subversion or tyranny by anyone.
      - xamuel 7y ago
        Yes, I've noticed this too: whenever the party I favor is in office, the office is a lame duck, unable to lift a finger without Congressional approval. Whenever the enemy party is in office, they're absolute tyrants answerable to no-one. This sure is convenient, as it saves me from all kinds of cognitive dissonance!
crazygringo 7y ago
Normally this might seem like a case of sore loser. But here's the thing: in government it's very important that contracts are awarded on objective merit, because otherwise there's shockingly large opportunity for corruption and favoritism. Billions and billions of dollars of opportunity. And also in this case, Trump's deep antipathy towards Bezos is well-documented, as well as his willingness to use government means for personal ends. Trump instructing the Pentagon to drop the objectively best bid seems to fit his established pattern of behavior. So in this case, Amazon's suit seems to be an entirely reasonable response. If what Amazon alleges is true and they win, it will be a victory for good government and correct use of taxpayer dollars. Presidents aren't kings -- it's vitally important for democracy that objective procedures are followed, and that personal grudges aren't allowed to influence multi-billion dollar deals.
- wbl 7y ago
  When the process has costs exceeding the costs of the corruption there is a problem. Look at CA and how Tudor Perini still wins contracts despite a history of failure to deliver and bilking the taxpayer with change orders.
  - FateOfNations 7y ago
    Not necessarily corruption in the traditional sense... We have a law that requires the government to accept the lowest "technically acceptable" bid... Tudor Perini knows how to game this system: Low ball the bid and then make up the difference with change orders later. Everyone else who is honest and submits good faith bids comes in higher and looses.
    - ericd 7y ago
      Then the state AG should go after him for fraud, if it can be shown that he never intended to honor his bid.
      - FpUser 7y ago
        They had, and they've won: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutor_Perini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutor_Perini
kick 7y ago
This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or whatever (so much so that even rms went to Microsoft and complimented them) yet completely ignore the harm they're still trying to cause.
- flatline 7y ago
  Is all defense-related work complicit in murder? Do we not need a military? Nothing is perfect, but we are trapped on a planet with a bunch of violent, highly intelligent apes. Certainly the military does things I disagree with, and things could always be improved, but generally what is the alternative?
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    kick's comment above is absolutely delusional. It's like something a teenager would write. Im starting to wonder if hackernews is turning into Reddit.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      From HN guidelines: > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - koheripbal 7y ago
        Point taken, thank you. ...but I am concerned that HN is changing for the worse.
slumdev 7y ago
> Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract – or JEDI I've been living under a rock, apparently. Is there some requirement that when a right-wing celebrity gets elected President, they have to use Star Wars codenames?
siffland 7y ago
After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought to get a non HP solid state array for our data, it was an epic battle (in the end I won, on the extreme we had 6 to 7 hour processes cut down to under an hour, the HP equivalent could not replicate that at the time). So i can see DoD moving to Azure and then get the vendor lock in and in 10 years if they want to move the cost will be so extreme it will either cause taxpayers a ton of money or not be realistic. As impossible as it sounds, and somewhat impractical, i would rather see a vendor agnostic approach and DoD spread across multiple gov clouds. i guess years has gotten me jaded with government spending (wait, what, how did we buy 2 extra $50k Cisco chassis and then keep them in storage for 3 years....).
- jszymborski 7y ago
  I understand that the existing approach results in a worse and more expensive product, but doesn't this approach also allow agencies to focus their efforts on assuring the vendors of their critical infrastructure aren't comprimised by bad actors etc...? (This isn't my area expertise, so I'm open to the idea of being super wrong)
  - siffland 7y ago
    You can lock down YOUR infrastructure, but then are 100% dependent on the cloud environment to maintain and patch theirs. Since you have no insight to what the underlying infrastructure consists of you really have no way of knowing if they are secure. Do their storage arrays have open CVE's? are they employing people who are mentally sane? You just need to trust them. So in the cloud just migrates the a lot of the security to another team. I do not know for a fact, but I am pretty sure the DoD cannot just show up at the AWS or Azure facilities and start auditing them (maybe they can and it is in a contract, someone else might know).
nova22033 7y ago
Is there an objective case for why Azure is better than AWS?
- LoveKebab 7y ago
  Yes depending on the use case. Each of the cloud providers have various things they do better than others depending on what you’re trying to do.
- bob1029 7y ago
  If you are a purely-Microsoft shop (AD/Exchange/Visual Studio), using Azure could give you better integration within their ecosystem (i.e. native Azure tooling within Visual Studio). I realize AWS has similar tools and plugins, but there is something nice to having first-party support down the entire vertical. Making your Microsoft account rep responsible for everything really does help to consolidate business administration concerns. If you are not a Microsoft shop (i.e. >50% of your stuff runs on Linux), I would almost say avoid Azure because of how focused it is on their stack. I know you can run arbitrary Linux on Azure and generally get everything done, but AWS (and all other non-Microsoft cloud vendors) always seemed more friendly/cheaper for non-Windows/Office concerns. So, it's not just about the cloud platforms and their respective costs per feature consumption unit. It's also about your business and the ecosystem required to support and operate within these cloud platforms.
  - rzmnzm 7y ago
    As Microsoft is proud to boast, the majority on instances on Azure are Linux based. The tooling that matters to me (az cli, terraform, vscode, kubectl et all) runs absolutely fine on Azure. I use Linux to create and manage Linux and open source infra on azure every day. The majority of complaints I hear about azure tend to revolve around their AzureRM templating, which is admittedly terrible, but irrelevant since terraform exists (and cloudformation is not much better imo). Also a lot of people dont/didn't like their portal. I don't frequently use the portal, and besides have you seen the aws portal? It's woeful. One benefit of azure is they name their products logically, like "azure virtual machine" instead of "magic beanstalk" or w/e
bsenftner 7y ago
"The cloud" is such a scam - of course a "war cloud" - why not, just triple the security billing invoice and collect obscene cash and power. Every sucker buys into "the cloud" when running a server yourself is elementary. We are doomed.
- jessemillar 7y ago
  One server is elementary, yes, but hundreds of thousands working together is an entirely different beast. There’s nothing easy about cloud computing and there’s a definite reason why it’s worth buying into.
  - bsenftner 7y ago
    > "There’s nothing easy about cloud computing" There's the deceptive mantra repeated mindlessly over and over, yet again. And there is nothing hard either. It is just complex. So everyone mindlessly pays too much because some marketing has successfully sold them that this is "too hard".
scottlocklin 7y ago
Why can't the government run its own computers? I mean, shouldn't it?
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  The federal government cannot compete with private industry salaries and benefits for rare technical talent because of caps on federal salaries. Federal salaries are capped because attacking "government waste" and "lazy overpaid government workers" is popular with politicians and the electorate. So instead the government outsources technical projects to private contractors... which means ultimately the government is paying those big salaries, and the profit margin on top of them. One of many many "penny wise / pound foolish" problems with the way we do government services.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Yeah I'm aware of how this goes down: in addition to what you say, government management types get their beds feathered by working for the for-profit companies they contract the work to after they "retire" (aka everyone involved in F35 procurement ends up working at Lockheed; total coincidence I am sure). Yet, somehow the NSA manages to run their own data centers[1]. It even looks kind of cost effective! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Part of that may have been the times. That project started construction back in 2011 which means it was in planning for a while before that. The cloud vs on-premises debate was at a different state back then iirc. Also it's for NSA's questionably legal spying on US citizens vs the more standard legality of DoD's work.
  - arbitrary_name 7y ago
    I've worked with federal government, and I can say is if rather that they pay private contractors. I used to find all paid government devs sleeping in toilet cubicles all the time. If rather Amazon or the squeeze on its employees to perform than shirt unmotivated public sector management. And this comes from an unabashed hard left big government voter.
dr-detroit 7y ago
If they leveraged cloud scale computing DoD would just wreak more havoc why would anyone want them to increase in efficiency? They're NEVER giving back our billions so the only gain from efficiency is greater net misery.
kerng 7y ago
Amazon's reaction seems quite defensive, and constantly keeps reminding us how Microsoft is seen as the better overall provider to be trusted in this case. Tech wise they are both capable, no doubt. I think Amazon should have just acknowledged it, congratulate Microsoft and move on - plenty of other growth ahead in cloud computing. That's what Satya Nadella would have done.
RocketSyntax 7y ago
I thought AWS would win for sure due to its GovCloud adoption https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/?whats-new-ess.sort-by=item.additionalFields.postDateTime&whats-new-ess.sort-order=desc https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/?whats-new-ess.sort-by=it...
- jaywalk 7y ago
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/government/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/gove...

151 points by dbg31415 7y ago

It is strange to me that there are even rules about this. Imagine if we decided to halt the Manhattan Project for a few months so the courts could work out whether contracts were properly awarded.

godelzilla 7y ago
Millions of people might not have died unnecessarily. The horror!
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  Nukes only killed a couple hundred thousand.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  Actually, millions of people would have died unnecessarily. Japan wouldn’t surrender, and was planning to slowly sacrifice its entire population to bleed the allied invasion of the home islands. Somehow people forget Japan started the war in the Pacific and murdered tens of millions of Chinese, Koreans, and other Asian civilians in the process.

reallydontask 7y ago

This reminds me of a time where the Department of Work and Pensions botched a bid for a Universal Jobmatch system and ended up awarding the contract, to methods consulting, re-tendering the contract and paying close to £1m to methods consulting I would not be surprised if something similar happened here, although the payout would likely be far higher and I'm in no way comparing Methods Consulting to Microsoft.

hpoe 7y ago

Didn't Oracle just sue the DoD claiming they wrote the requirements in such a way that only Amazon could get it?

robmiller 7y ago
Wouldn't surprise me. I heard the person who wrote the legislation left when they were completed and took a job with AWS.
- buckminster 7y ago
  The British civil servant who championed the use of AWS by the British government took a job with AWS after the deal was done. It is shameful.
sp332 7y ago
I hadn't heard of that side of the argument. According to https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/oracle-argues-jedi-defense-contract-bid-tarnished-by-amazon-conflicts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/oracle-argues-jedi-defense-c..., Oracle had complained about this before, then kinda dropped it, then revived it one week after Amazon launched their new complaint.
robbyt 7y ago
Ironic, because normally Oracle are the ones doing this
partiallypro 7y ago
My view is that Amazon did help write the requirements, and then lost the contract thinking it was in the bag. So now they are taking it to court because they were shocked their in the bag contract wasn't rewarded.
j-c-hewitt 7y ago
The court ruled in favor of the government: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv1880-102-0 https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv... There were some improprieties found as it relates to the conduct of Amazon's agents and in the RFP process, but it got the greenlight overall. This might be the problem with Amazon litigating the changes to the RFP process. Oracle already litigated the previous version of the RFP. It looks like the process changed in part to head off the perception that it was rigged in favor of Amazon. Now, Amazon alleges that this re-rigging made it rigged out of its favor. So, it went: Oracle: "This is rigged for Amazon! These requirements can only be met by Amazon! Also it's unfair that it can only be won by a single entity!" Judge: "The Pentagon didn't want to have multiple clouds because it would defeat the reason for the project. We didn't find that the RFP was corrupt to the point of breaking the law, but it was definitely sort of corrupt, particularly in the case of the dude who was on the committee creating the RFP while simultaneously selling a startup to Amazon while simultaneously telling the Pentagon that he wasn't breaking the law and telling Amazon he was not breaking the law, but he was totally breaking the law." This obviously put the Pentagon between the rock of leaving the RFP as-is and being sued again for corruption and the hard place of changing the RFP and being accused of improper political influence. If Trump had avoided taking a public stance on the issue it would have been much better for the Pentagon's situation, as this now creates a situation in which no matter what the Pentagon decided they could be credibly accused of corruption.

arkitaip 7y ago

I wonder how often system implementation delays are caused by excessive government contract litigation? How much does it cost taxpayers because Amazon or Oracle are litigious?

ckastner 7y ago

What if Microsoft were to assume and any all risk from a possible judgment not in their favor?

foolfoolz 7y ago

this kind of stuff is such an american way of doing things. - bid for contracts that enables government to make some real progress - lose - sue because you lost, claim winner can’t start until your suit is over - introduce 1-2 year delay of waiting while your complaint is processed and people wonder why china gets things done in a quarter of the time

lagadu 7y ago
Yeah, they get things done because they're a totalitarian, completely opaque regime. I'll take western governments with all their faults and inneficiencies, thank you.
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  Plenty of western governments get lots done efficiently. Parent comment was about US practices.
  - castlecrasher2 7y ago
    Did you even read the last sentence of the parent comment?
    - rahuldottech 7y ago
      Did you read the first?
      - castlecrasher2 7y ago
        I did. I mean, I /could/ focus on only one sentence of a post, argue from that point alone, and insist the conversation hinge on that point but that would be ignorant and rude.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Also this is completely ignoring that in China the government would have picked Microsoft over Amazon, and there would be zero legal recourse because there is no rule of law there. And as Chinese subjects we would not be allowed to say anything critical of the government because it threatens the "national dignity." Even if it's obviously cronyism perpetrated by the leadership, like if Microsoft in this case were owned by one of the party officials or a relative. We would be expected to trust our government explicitly even in cases where we personally know that it's wrong. So sure, you can get a lot done in those cases, but it might not be the right things to do, and there's zero process for remediation except to hope that another party leader takes over and changes it for you. So when anyone says China is totalitarian this is what is meant and why the US is ideologically opposed to China and Chinese rule.

CrankyBear 7y ago

This is standard procedure in these kind of contract fights. I get so sick and tired of government IT contract squabbles. They drag on for years, little usually changes, and, in the meantime the work doesn't get done.

shadowgovt 7y ago
I'm not sure how standard procedure it is for the President to intervene in a down-the-chain contract decision though.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  The question shouldn't be whether it's standard, but if the office has the authority to intervene. You can then work backwards to legislative hot fixes to governance deficiencies.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Unfortunately, the question of how much authority the office has depends on which party currently occupies the office and who's asking.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Which is why it's important to craft policy of strong checks and balances, regardless of which party has a majority. Today you're the Rebellion, tomorrow you're the Empire. Design systems resilient to subversion or tyranny by anyone.
    - xamuel 7y ago
      Yes, I've noticed this too: whenever the party I favor is in office, the office is a lame duck, unable to lift a finger without Congressional approval. Whenever the enemy party is in office, they're absolute tyrants answerable to no-one. This sure is convenient, as it saves me from all kinds of cognitive dissonance!

crazygringo 7y ago

Normally this might seem like a case of sore loser. But here's the thing: in government it's very important that contracts are awarded on objective merit, because otherwise there's shockingly large opportunity for corruption and favoritism. Billions and billions of dollars of opportunity. And also in this case, Trump's deep antipathy towards Bezos is well-documented, as well as his willingness to use government means for personal ends. Trump instructing the Pentagon to drop the objectively best bid seems to fit his established pattern of behavior. So in this case, Amazon's suit seems to be an entirely reasonable response. If what Amazon alleges is true and they win, it will be a victory for good government and correct use of taxpayer dollars. Presidents aren't kings -- it's vitally important for democracy that objective procedures are followed, and that personal grudges aren't allowed to influence multi-billion dollar deals.

wbl 7y ago
When the process has costs exceeding the costs of the corruption there is a problem. Look at CA and how Tudor Perini still wins contracts despite a history of failure to deliver and bilking the taxpayer with change orders.
- FateOfNations 7y ago
  Not necessarily corruption in the traditional sense... We have a law that requires the government to accept the lowest "technically acceptable" bid... Tudor Perini knows how to game this system: Low ball the bid and then make up the difference with change orders later. Everyone else who is honest and submits good faith bids comes in higher and looses.
  - ericd 7y ago
    Then the state AG should go after him for fraud, if it can be shown that he never intended to honor his bid.
    - FpUser 7y ago
      They had, and they've won: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutor_Perini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutor_Perini

kick 7y ago

This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like it's just chat software or something. With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done," and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress," you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder. So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or whatever (so much so that even rms went to Microsoft and complimented them) yet completely ignore the harm they're still trying to cause.

flatline 7y ago
Is all defense-related work complicit in murder? Do we not need a military? Nothing is perfect, but we are trapped on a planet with a bunch of violent, highly intelligent apes. Certainly the military does things I disagree with, and things could always be improved, but generally what is the alternative?
- koheripbal 7y ago
  kick's comment above is absolutely delusional. It's like something a teenager would write. Im starting to wonder if hackernews is turning into Reddit.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    From HN guidelines: > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - koheripbal 7y ago
      Point taken, thank you. ...but I am concerned that HN is changing for the worse.

slumdev 7y ago

> Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract – or JEDI I've been living under a rock, apparently. Is there some requirement that when a right-wing celebrity gets elected President, they have to use Star Wars codenames?

siffland 7y ago

After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no competition. HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a HP shop. I fought to get a non HP solid state array for our data, it was an epic battle (in the end I won, on the extreme we had 6 to 7 hour processes cut down to under an hour, the HP equivalent could not replicate that at the time). So i can see DoD moving to Azure and then get the vendor lock in and in 10 years if they want to move the cost will be so extreme it will either cause taxpayers a ton of money or not be realistic. As impossible as it sounds, and somewhat impractical, i would rather see a vendor agnostic approach and DoD spread across multiple gov clouds. i guess years has gotten me jaded with government spending (wait, what, how did we buy 2 extra $50k Cisco chassis and then keep them in storage for 3 years....).

jszymborski 7y ago
I understand that the existing approach results in a worse and more expensive product, but doesn't this approach also allow agencies to focus their efforts on assuring the vendors of their critical infrastructure aren't comprimised by bad actors etc...? (This isn't my area expertise, so I'm open to the idea of being super wrong)
- siffland 7y ago
  You can lock down YOUR infrastructure, but then are 100% dependent on the cloud environment to maintain and patch theirs. Since you have no insight to what the underlying infrastructure consists of you really have no way of knowing if they are secure. Do their storage arrays have open CVE's? are they employing people who are mentally sane? You just need to trust them. So in the cloud just migrates the a lot of the security to another team. I do not know for a fact, but I am pretty sure the DoD cannot just show up at the AWS or Azure facilities and start auditing them (maybe they can and it is in a contract, someone else might know).

nova22033 7y ago

Is there an objective case for why Azure is better than AWS?

LoveKebab 7y ago
Yes depending on the use case. Each of the cloud providers have various things they do better than others depending on what you’re trying to do.
bob1029 7y ago
If you are a purely-Microsoft shop (AD/Exchange/Visual Studio), using Azure could give you better integration within their ecosystem (i.e. native Azure tooling within Visual Studio). I realize AWS has similar tools and plugins, but there is something nice to having first-party support down the entire vertical. Making your Microsoft account rep responsible for everything really does help to consolidate business administration concerns. If you are not a Microsoft shop (i.e. >50% of your stuff runs on Linux), I would almost say avoid Azure because of how focused it is on their stack. I know you can run arbitrary Linux on Azure and generally get everything done, but AWS (and all other non-Microsoft cloud vendors) always seemed more friendly/cheaper for non-Windows/Office concerns. So, it's not just about the cloud platforms and their respective costs per feature consumption unit. It's also about your business and the ecosystem required to support and operate within these cloud platforms.
- rzmnzm 7y ago
  As Microsoft is proud to boast, the majority on instances on Azure are Linux based. The tooling that matters to me (az cli, terraform, vscode, kubectl et all) runs absolutely fine on Azure. I use Linux to create and manage Linux and open source infra on azure every day. The majority of complaints I hear about azure tend to revolve around their AzureRM templating, which is admittedly terrible, but irrelevant since terraform exists (and cloudformation is not much better imo). Also a lot of people dont/didn't like their portal. I don't frequently use the portal, and besides have you seen the aws portal? It's woeful. One benefit of azure is they name their products logically, like "azure virtual machine" instead of "magic beanstalk" or w/e

bsenftner 7y ago

"The cloud" is such a scam - of course a "war cloud" - why not, just triple the security billing invoice and collect obscene cash and power. Every sucker buys into "the cloud" when running a server yourself is elementary. We are doomed.

jessemillar 7y ago
One server is elementary, yes, but hundreds of thousands working together is an entirely different beast. There’s nothing easy about cloud computing and there’s a definite reason why it’s worth buying into.
- bsenftner 7y ago
  > "There’s nothing easy about cloud computing" There's the deceptive mantra repeated mindlessly over and over, yet again. And there is nothing hard either. It is just complex. So everyone mindlessly pays too much because some marketing has successfully sold them that this is "too hard".

scottlocklin 7y ago

Why can't the government run its own computers? I mean, shouldn't it?

snowwrestler 7y ago
The federal government cannot compete with private industry salaries and benefits for rare technical talent because of caps on federal salaries. Federal salaries are capped because attacking "government waste" and "lazy overpaid government workers" is popular with politicians and the electorate. So instead the government outsources technical projects to private contractors... which means ultimately the government is paying those big salaries, and the profit margin on top of them. One of many many "penny wise / pound foolish" problems with the way we do government services.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Yeah I'm aware of how this goes down: in addition to what you say, government management types get their beds feathered by working for the for-profit companies they contract the work to after they "retire" (aka everyone involved in F35 procurement ends up working at Lockheed; total coincidence I am sure). Yet, somehow the NSA manages to run their own data centers[1]. It even looks kind of cost effective! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Part of that may have been the times. That project started construction back in 2011 which means it was in planning for a while before that. The cloud vs on-premises debate was at a different state back then iirc. Also it's for NSA's questionably legal spying on US citizens vs the more standard legality of DoD's work.
- arbitrary_name 7y ago
  I've worked with federal government, and I can say is if rather that they pay private contractors. I used to find all paid government devs sleeping in toilet cubicles all the time. If rather Amazon or the squeeze on its employees to perform than shirt unmotivated public sector management. And this comes from an unabashed hard left big government voter.

dr-detroit 7y ago

If they leveraged cloud scale computing DoD would just wreak more havoc why would anyone want them to increase in efficiency? They're NEVER giving back our billions so the only gain from efficiency is greater net misery.

kerng 7y ago

Amazon's reaction seems quite defensive, and constantly keeps reminding us how Microsoft is seen as the better overall provider to be trusted in this case. Tech wise they are both capable, no doubt. I think Amazon should have just acknowledged it, congratulate Microsoft and move on - plenty of other growth ahead in cloud computing. That's what Satya Nadella would have done.

RocketSyntax 7y ago

I thought AWS would win for sure due to its GovCloud adoption https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/?whats-new-ess.sort-by=item.additionalFields.postDateTime&whats-new-ess.sort-order=desc https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/?whats-new-ess.sort-by=it...

jaywalk 7y ago
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/government/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/gove...