12 ms·

It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

186 points by Foe 6y ago

partiallypro 6y ago
My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.
- sterlind 6y ago
  I work for MS but don't know anything about the bidding process. I was a little surprised we won, but now it makes sense. I feel like even if they can't get the DoD to let them re-bid now that they have proprietary information on us and our bid, they'll tie us up in court as long as they can to keep us from successfully delivering. They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and keep other companies out. Icky.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and keep other companies out. Icky. I'm not picking on you as an individual, but there's great justice in Microsoft suffering this.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    I agree, it’s terribly unfair when companies use their dominant market position to crowd out would-be entrants.
    - sharemywin 6y ago
      I'm confused which company are you referring to? oh, wait every dominant giant company ever...
      - keeganpoppen 6y ago
        oh, ^please^... not "every dominant giant company ever" has been found by U.S. federal court to have engaged in monopolistic / anti-competitive behavior. legality aside, that's to say nothing of all their no-walter-its-not-illegal-youre-just-an-asshole shenanigans contemporaneous with, and preceding, the lawsuit. playing dumb and conflating what Microsoft did with "every dominant giant company ever" only serves to whitewash a (well-deserved) reputation that they themselves have had to work to disavow (both in word, publically, and in deed) for years. incidentally, this feels quite similar to how the Bill Gates Foundation whitewashes its eponymous benefactor's legacy having been the driving force behind said ruthlessness.* * please don't make me put in a disclaimer about how people / companies can change, etc.-- we all know-- this is about preserving the past, not casting aspersions on these entities in the present
        mrkramer 6y ago
        What Microsoft did with Internet Explorer maybe looked dirty back in the day but ironically enough United States v. Microsoft Corp. suit started in 1998, the same year when Google was founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser. Innovations will always displace dominant products and the cycle goes on and on.
        CPLX 6y ago
        There’s a strong argument to be made that putting MS on the defensive about antitrust in the late 90’s is the reason so many other dominant tech companies were able to get a foothold in the 5-10 years following. Which also points to why we are in today’s predicament, having abandoned antitrust entirely.
        jamessb 6y ago
        > founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser Google didn't release the first version of Chrome until 2008, 10 years later.
        erpellan 6y ago
- ross2990 6y ago
  When JEDI was first proposed, AWS had already been the vast majority of cloud services for the Intelligence community. This led to them having a distinct advantage because they already had the certified infrastructure to handle US Secret and Top Secret information. This was (in my own thoughts) why that immediate capability was stressed so much in the initial request for proposal.
  - sailfast 6y ago
    First off - I don't know that it's normal for a competing company in a protest to post a press release like this. I know things have gotten nuts recently and people protest for giggles these days, but this seems... weird. I also wonder to a certain extent why additional ceiling was not added under the current vehicle to do this if AWS was the preferred solution. MOUs signed, dollars routed, etc seems to be the easiest route rather than a massive procurement for something like this. It doesn't make any sense unless they're awarding an entirely new data center. It also sounds like there's a disagreement about a core requirement / availability definitions which significantly impact storage costs, which obviously would change one's bid? https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480585/AWS-hits-out-at-narrow-scope-of-DoDs-planned-re-evaluation-of-JEDI-cloud-contract https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480585/AWS-hits-out-a... DoD IG Report on the process: https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Joint-Enterprise-Defense-Infrastructure-Jedi-Cloud-Procurement-Dodig-2020-079#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Join...
  - partiallypro 6y ago
    More likely the Amazon lobbied hard to make requirements a barrier to entry: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-review-amazon-employees-influence-over-billion-government-contract/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-... https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-department-jedi-contract/ https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-departmen... https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/DoDs-JEDI-cloud-contract-favors-AWS-with-Microsoft-on-deck https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/D...
  - blackflame7000 6y ago
- roel_v 6y ago
  Having been on the winning side of a contract once for a bid that was clearly 100% written by a competitor, the Big Dog in our industry, in such a way that they absolutely thought only they could ever be meeting the terms - and then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, I can a little bit imagine how satisfying this win must have been for the Microsoft bid manager or whatever they'd be called. And my project was only 6 digits.
  - wahern 6y ago
    > then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, Did you actually deliver on time and on budget?
    - 23B1 6y ago
      crickets heh
    - roel_v 6y ago
      Just a little over time, and it was fixed budget. Timing wise still much better than the norm in our industry.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  More precisely, it looks like Amazon hired the DOD guy who helped write the scope. Being involved in those pre-RFP discussions, understanding the reasoning, and secondary undocumented concerns would be immensely valuable.
  - partiallypro 6y ago
    And Bezos sits on the Pentagon defense innovation advisory board. Eric Schmidt is the chairman, but he's no longer with Google, and GCS is probably too young for the Pentagon for this sort of use case.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Amazon has put a LOT of money into DC. From setting up an HQ2 in DC to Bezos personally purchasing the largest mansion in the city to host event for political power brokers. It should be no surprise that he's pissed that that amount of investment isn't starting to pay dividends.
  - GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
    Not to mention the newspaper.
    - smitty1e 6y ago
      It's worth not mentioning.
      - GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
        Do you think he bought it because he really likes journalism?
        chadcmulligan 6y ago
        Here's an interview with him here about it [1] It seems he had a mix of reasons, he says. No doubt now that it's a functioning entity he has an added bonus. I remember at the time though most people thought he was throwing good money after bad. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/09/19/why-jeff-bezos-bought-the-washington-post/#3335b1163aab https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/09/19/why...
        GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
        The reasons he gives for buying it don't tell us anything. His net worth is in the 12 figures. Everything he says publicly is crafted by a well paid and highly competent PR team. If he bought it to gain political influence, which seems to me the only reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or for any other reason that would put him in a bad light, he would not in a million years come out and say that openly.
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  There's considerable evidence that Amazon lost this because the President doesn't like The Washington Post. Even assuming the accusations against Amazon are true as well: what's worse? (a) A vendor gaining unfair advantage and overcharging by 10%? Or, (b), the President using the power of the federal government to punish journalists for criticising him? The Washington Post was, by the way, the newspaper that uncovered that the Trump Foundation had spent their complete budget at Trump properties or for personal expenditures such as the famous painting. This was several million $, all donated by members of the public, ostensibly intended to help veterans. These accusations lead to a court case, which the foundation lost, requiring it to be shut down and his children being barred from serving on non-profit boards in the future. So, to answer the choice from the beginning: if you choose (b) and allow the WashPo and other media to be pressured into silence, you'll lose the free press and still get the corruption.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    Mind linking to or sharing some of the evidence for b? I had heard rumors about that on reddit, but hadn't seen anything concrete.
- guru4consulting 6y ago
  Btw, this is a widely known practice (not sure if it's legally accepted though). Government contractors often play a big role in shaping the RFI/RFP requirements. This is a multi-year process that involves socializing, discovering the legacy/obsolete systems in client environment, learning about their business side, identifying pain points in the gov customer side, etc. Big contractors like Raytheon, CACI, SAIC have a well-defined and stream-lined process for this. This is where smaller contractors or startups find it very difficult to get into gov contracting because they don't have the kind of access that Raytheon/CACI has. So, I don't see any surprise in AWS giving inputs for shaping DoD requirements. Cutting all the politics and legalities, is n't AWS superior to Azure? I guess Azure's major revenue is still from MS-office subscriptions, but AWS is more battled hardened, more reliable and has more variety of services than Azure. At least, that's my perception.
- lstroud 6y ago
  That said, from a citizens standpoint, if the government is going to only pick one, I can’t imagine it not being AWS. The difference in capability and capacity isn’t within an order of magnitude.
voz_ 6y ago
Good writeup. Looks like a very interesting case. The more I read about Amazon, the more I detest them.
gaukes 6y ago
> Even if you believe that Amazon may have started as the front runner, it’s clear our team worked hard to catch up and surpass them by investing in our technology and listening to the DoD. Is MSFT actually ahead?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Define "ahead". Is AWS cutting edge? Maybe, but does your business need cutting edge? Likely not. I see an enormous shift in the market towards Azure from clients of all sizes, for a variety of reasons (cost, married to AD/O365/etc, not wanting to give a competitor [Amazon] dollars). Azure definitely has the momentum, it's their race to lose against AWS. Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions my own, not that of any employer past, current, or future.
  - thisisnico 6y ago
    Microsoft can offer fully-integrated solutions with their already incredibly popular software. So that's a distinct advantage.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Azure is less friendly as a technology practitioner (compared to working with AWS), but I fully appreciate the value you describe. Does AWS have Active Directory as a first class citizen? Office 365? Outlook/Exchange? No.
      - chucky_z 6y ago
        AWS does offer AD as a first class citizen... More than Azure. AzureAD is not Active Directory, and unless something has changed a lot in the last year (maybe it has?), Azure does not offer anything that looks, smells, and feels like on-prem AD in the cloud.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
ceejayoz 6y ago
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-trump-contract-187850 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... > The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.
- wnevets 6y ago
  >barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews So probably yes.
- eganist 6y ago
  I mean, in an ideal world I'd think this would be an automatic DQ, but we live in the darkest timeline.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  A quote past the first paragraph of the story: > the IG said "we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated proposals and made the source-selection awarding Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured about their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House." As with most articles, the juicy, salacious lines are at the beginning but the real details are 10 paragraphs in. Based on the following paragraphs, the IG did find evidence of ethical misconduct by Amazon as they hired the DOD guy who helped form the JEDI program.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    "The evidence we received" is fairly meaningless when coupled with "we weren't allowed to obtain the evidence we wanted".
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      I've lived through an IG investigation. You generally only want to respond in writing so you give a correct and complete answer instead of misspeaking and having it used against you, your project, or agency later on. It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.
sbussard 6y ago
I get the feeling that unless Amazon finds some integrity they will not last long as a company. If you read Blind, they're the company that everyone loves to hate - even their own employees.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> there is a very specific issue before the court at the moment. It may seem arcane and procedural, but the back-and-forth arguments between Amazon and the government raise a key question of principle and fairness that should matter to us all. Namely, should a company—like Amazon—that bid high and lost, now get a do-over, especially now—as the IG’s report makes clear—Amazon received additional proprietary information about Microsoft’s bid that it should never have had. Actually, I don't really see the problem. There are two hypothetical models: 1. Everyone gets to bid for the work once, and if they get it wrong, too bad for them. What's right and what's wrong? Depends on your point of view. What matters is that everyone got the same single chance to bid for a government contract. 2. Everyone bids for the contract. If their bid isn't being accepted, they're free to adjust it. What matters is what the terms ultimately are, not what they were at the start of bidding. You may recognize that second model as the normal way everything is sold everywhere. What's supposed to be wrong with Amazon quoting a price for something, not getting a sale, and then lowering the price? We should hope they do, and that Microsoft responds by lowering their price even more.
- roel_v 6y ago
  Of course you can construct an argument for anything if you can just make up things. The fact here is that there is only one reality: your option 1. Those are the rules for any closed bid procurement processes. Who is going to bid for anything if they know they will be in a race to the bottom even after spending all their time on the initial bid?
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    People who expect to be able to turn a profit at their quoted price will bid. Just like everything else. Who's supposedly benefiting from these rules? Why would we be interested in following them?
- partiallypro 6y ago
  Isn't the point though that Amazon knew about Microsoft's bid and other proprietary elements and STILL bid high (while Microsoft was blind to Amazon's?) They already had the advantage of information. #2 has already effectively happened.
deleted 6y ago
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steve19 6y ago
This misses the point. All large DoD contract are usually followed by a lawsuit from the loser. I have seen this happens so many times. If MSFT lost, they would have probably sued.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Yes, it is normal. Even small government RFP contracts often have do-overs when losers challenge the results. I remember when Boeing first was awarded the US Air Force tanker contract. It was soon rescinded for, among other things, fraud. They won the project again the second time around. Recently, the US Air Force has refused delivery of the tankers because of manufacturing flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun
  - Gwypaas 6y ago
    More complicated than that. Northrop Grumman and EADS/Airbus in a joint bid won with a more capable platform, it was then redone due to Boeing protesting. In the redo Boeing won. Comparatively the A330 MRRT, which the first round winning bid was based on entered service June 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  This comment misses the point. How many other government contracts have the presumed favorite lose after the President made multiple statements saying that he would do everything in his power to screw over the favorite? And AWS losing IS an upset. I've spent a lot of time around government contracting and this whole bid process was mind-boggling badly handled by the government. The number of conflicts-of-interests involved throughout the process are absurd.
mullingitover 6y ago
Command+F 'Trump' -> 0 results They seem to be ignoring the massive elephant in the room, where there was political intrigue and a personal vendetta interfering in what's supposed to be an apolitical process[1]. > "I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon; they're saying it wasn't competitively bid," Trump told reporters on July 18. "I will be asking them to take a look at it very closely to see what's going on because I have had very few things where there's been such complaining." The fact that DoD officials were gagged from providing truthful testimony should automatically result in the results being thrown out. They wouldn't be gagged if they were going to say something helpful to Microsoft. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747374991/pentagon-pauses-10-billion-cloud-contract-after-months-of-controversy https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747374991/pentagon-pauses-10-...
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  "Amazon would have you believe that it lost the award because of bias at the highest levels of government." Maybe you should expand your search terms, or, you know, RTFA.
TomMckenny 6y ago
DoD officials are barred from answering questions about White House influence on the decision owing to its assertion of "presidential communications privilege"[1]. This is, quite simply, a confession. Nothing is solved by believing that the administration is somehow different than the dozen or so near identical leaders in other countries: that somehow this one uniquely is not pressuring companies hostile to it (in spite of the fact it has already publicly done so[2][3]). And while a deferential Amazon might be bad, it's really something you'd want to nip in the bud before Google or Facebook become too terrified of the white house. [1]https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-trump-contract-187850 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/06/would-the-trump-administration-block-a-merger-just-to-punish-cnn/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/06/w... [3]https://www.wsj.com/articles/snag-in-media-merger-stirs-tensions-over-trump-cnn-feud-1510354324 https://www.wsj.com/articles/snag-in-media-merger-stirs-tens...
- 23B1 6y ago
  > This is, quite simply, a confession. That's like saying pleading the 5th is a confession...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - belltaco 6y ago
    I mean, the President himself said multiple times that pleading the 5th meant one was guilty.
  - TomMckenny 6y ago
    It's not a trial, it's the public asking their government to tell them what's going on in this matter. And the government flatly refused. From this, it's absolutely reasonable for the public to think its government is hiding something now. And it's an order to _others_ in the DoD to remain silent. If it were a trial, this is ordering potential witnesses to remain silent on threat of termination. What the White House is saying by claiming presidential privileged is 1) the president did indeed discuss it, which in itself is problematic and 2) that discussion is on par with a national security issue, which is an additional abuse of power. As an aside, the 5th exists to prevent coerced confessions. In court, it is not to be taken as a sign of guilt because if it were, the point of the law would be moot. Where no court (or police) are involved, there is no possibility of coerced confession. Which is why everyone correctly views refusing to answer questions to friends, parents or reporters as very much a sign of guilt. And why confessions signed in police stations are very suspicious in many people's eyes. It certainly does not allow a government to refuse to answer to its people.
gpm 6y ago
> A central premise of the federal procurement system is that “full and fair competition“ on a “level playing field“ means that competitors are asked to make their best bids without knowing what the other has bid or will bid. That principle ensures that companies seeking to do business with the federal government offer their best price from the beginning. No, it doesn't. This is known as a first-price sealed bid auction. It guarantees they will roughly speaking offer the government the highest price they think they will win at, not their lowest price. For a more detailed analysis see the wikipedia aritcle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction The "standard" (mathematical) answer to getting this property would be to run a second-price sealed bid auction, where the winner is the player with the lowest bid, but they get paid the amount of the second lowest bid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.
mrslave 6y ago
When losing a deal worth $1 billion/year for 10 years (gross, of course) the right course of action is to sue the customer, hoping to then win them as a customer. One rule for the rulers and another for the ruled.
marzell 6y ago
JEDI aside, I feel like Azure has grown in leaps and bounds... meanwhile AWS has rested on its laurels because they were the first major cloud and so many people adopted them early and either are stuck or in denial about where Azure is at. Even Microsoft shops that would benefit from tighter integrations and quicker feature releases seem to only really consider Azure an afterthought and will use GCP for specialty cases in lieu of AWS. I'm not trying to be a fanboy for MS, but I've found Azure much easier to adopt personally, and their tooling especially around databases can work really well. With AWS I feel like with every service I have to try out 3 or 4 third party tools for development which causes a ton of overhead and risk of using a tool that changes direction or stops meaningful development. Whenever I try to challenge the status quo people at work react like I'm an idiot. Although, I'm not suggesting to a heavily-invested org that they should switch clouds, but just asking questions like why we are heavily using RDS SQL Server when Azure SQL-whatever-version-you-want would work even better and often cheaper.
- rpedela 6y ago
  I will buy SQL Server specifically, but if you are using MySQL or Postgres then AWS is still the clear winner in my book. RDS is great and Aurora is even better, and serverless...wow. Both Azure's and GCP's managed database offerings don't match up if using MySQL or Postgres.
  - kevsim 6y ago
    How does RDS Postgres beat GCP hosted Postgres? Genuinely curious as we're running on GCP and I'm wondering what we're missing out on.
    - rpedela 6y ago
      Turnaround time for supporting the latest version on RDS is faster, and RDS supports more extensions. Then if you need to scale you have Aurora.
- beerandt 6y ago
  Strong-arming Office 365 onto companies was also pretty brilliant, in that it forced every company/org that uses Office to at least investigate the MS ecosystem. And by a person who likely holds at least some sway over purchasing power and infrastructure decisions. And how many companies don't use Office at all?
smitty1e 6y ago
No. The government should have multiple cloud providers.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  No. They should run almost everything in-house so it can be properly integrated.
  - chadcmulligan 6y ago
    Isn't the usual business of government to rotate every 5-10 years? - In house is the way to go! - No the pervious administration was wrong - outsourcing is the way to go Lather, rinse, repeat
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      With anything relating to advance technology I think the systematic outsourcing has been prevalent since at least WWII.
  - solidasparagus 6y ago
    Like they do now? That hasn't worked out so hot for integration...
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Not like they do now. If it was, you and I would know more about it because the infra would be required to be open source public domain
      - solidasparagus 6y ago
        What? Why do you think info about Top Secret-ready infrastructure would be public domain?
        6y ago
pnw_hazor 6y ago
I wouldn't get too excited about a PR letter from a Microsoft lawyer. IBM and Oracle made early protests that were dismissed, but Amazon's was sustained. Note, Oracle is appealing the dismissal of its protest. This is regarding the injunction that is in place now: In the ruling, the judge said Amazon was likely to show that Microsoft offered a “noncompliant storage solution” to reduce the costs of its JEDI bid and that the Pentagon “erred” by not issuing a “deficiency” to Microsoft’s proposal. The judge concluded that Amazon’s “chances of receiving the award would have increased absent [the Pentagon’s] evaluation error.” https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/03/amazon-quite-likely-prove-pentagon-made-evaluation-error-jedi-cloud-contract-judge-says/163610/ https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/03/amazon-quit...
krtong 6y ago
The government has always and will always pick winners and losers. It's that simple.
jsnider3 6y ago
It lost because Trump hates Jeff Bezos for some reason.
- krapp 6y ago
  >It lost because Trump hates Jeff Bezos for some reason. Bezos is a Democrat and owner of the Washington Post, a paper which has been openly critical of Trump's administration.
  - jsnider3 6y ago
    Bezos is not a Democrat, but yes WaPo like all reputable journalists has been critical of Trump.
Rafuino 6y ago
"Much of the $1 billion (USD) we spend on security each year goes toward Azure. Even if you believe that Amazon may have started as the front runner, it’s clear our team worked hard to catch up and surpass them by investing in our technology and listening to the DoD." How much does Amazon spend as a company on "security" and how much of it goes to AWS, specifically? Interesting talking point, but worthless without a real comparison. Also, "we delivered new innovations including native edge devices that can withstand the challenging environments in which the DoD operates." What the heck is a "native edge device"? Is it a server hosted on the back of a drone? Is it fortified compute hosted in a storage container in a forward operating base? Is it just Azure Stack HCI on a warship? Really interested in that one.
tomohawk 6y ago
The DOD made a big mistake here. They should have let several cloud contracts, or a contract that enables use of diverse cloud providers. Instead, they made a contract that is too big to lose.
acruns 6y ago
This is SOP for a contract like this. I worked in this field for over a decade before I went back to straight consulting. Helping or ever writing a RFP / RFI / proposal for a customer is not unheard of. I was given the opportunity to provide input on more than one occasion and would certainly include requirements I knew competitors could not functionally meet, in esence eliminating all other competitors. They could respond but when the technical team members meet with project sponsors and there is a big red square on the scorecard in the competitors column indicating they can't meet a requirement what is a SVP going to say? 'We don't need that'? They aren't technical and even if they ask about it we clearly have internal support for our product and can count on the technical team explaining why our feature is a requirement. (We just so happen to have the best product so this wasn't much of stretch.) The only difference between the private sector and gov is we can't take them out to a $3000 dinner to discuss the requirements before they submit them. As you can tell, this is a "bit" sleazy, while still mostly truthful we are clearly trying to influence the outcome in our favor. Having worked with the OIG (office inspector general), more than one of them, they are as much a political animal as any other office in DC, more so in lots of ways, so getting a report from them that says what you want is just a matter of phone calls and dinners with the right ppl. AWS got played, plain and simple. They thought they were going to win and probably didn't do as mush as they should have to make sure they could win, and at the same time underestimated Microsoft. Just bc Azure was new to the DOD doesn't mean its new to the feds, I worked on several projects in AZ with the feds, and MSFT is not new to DC, they have been playing in DC politics for decades, and doing so very successfully. Which I am guessing from my outside view was AWS / Jeff's mistake. Buying a mansion and hosting partys in DC and a amateur move. There are a lot of very powerful ppl in DC that are former MSFT employees. It is very common practice to move from MSFT's fed teams to a fairly high position in a fed agency for your 20 years to get you retirement plan completed.
zimbatm 6y ago
Does anyone know what the nature of that proprietary information is?
bid_high 6y ago
"Microsoft won the JEDI contract because the Department of Defense found that we offered “significantly superior” technology at a better price." Umm.. what? Are they mentally impaired? I recently tried doing something very simple - use the QnA Maker. You should check it out for yourself - the number of clicks needed to do something as simple as this makes me question all the comments I see these days that say "Azure is as good as AWS". No, it is not. It is a lot more complex for simple tasks, and looks like it has been assembled together by a bunch of monkeys.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jeffrallen 6y ago
Two ugly gorillas fighting for the bananas held out by a war monger. Whatever.

186 points by Foe 6y ago

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

sterlind 6y ago
I work for MS but don't know anything about the bidding process. I was a little surprised we won, but now it makes sense. I feel like even if they can't get the DoD to let them re-bid now that they have proprietary information on us and our bid, they'll tie us up in court as long as they can to keep us from successfully delivering. They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and keep other companies out. Icky.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and keep other companies out. Icky. I'm not picking on you as an individual, but there's great justice in Microsoft suffering this.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  I agree, it’s terribly unfair when companies use their dominant market position to crowd out would-be entrants.
  - sharemywin 6y ago
    I'm confused which company are you referring to? oh, wait every dominant giant company ever...
    - keeganpoppen 6y ago
      oh, ^please^... not "every dominant giant company ever" has been found by U.S. federal court to have engaged in monopolistic / anti-competitive behavior. legality aside, that's to say nothing of all their no-walter-its-not-illegal-youre-just-an-asshole shenanigans contemporaneous with, and preceding, the lawsuit. playing dumb and conflating what Microsoft did with "every dominant giant company ever" only serves to whitewash a (well-deserved) reputation that they themselves have had to work to disavow (both in word, publically, and in deed) for years. incidentally, this feels quite similar to how the Bill Gates Foundation whitewashes its eponymous benefactor's legacy having been the driving force behind said ruthlessness.* * please don't make me put in a disclaimer about how people / companies can change, etc.-- we all know-- this is about preserving the past, not casting aspersions on these entities in the present
      - mrkramer 6y ago
        What Microsoft did with Internet Explorer maybe looked dirty back in the day but ironically enough United States v. Microsoft Corp. suit started in 1998, the same year when Google was founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser. Innovations will always displace dominant products and the cycle goes on and on.
        CPLX 6y ago
        There’s a strong argument to be made that putting MS on the defensive about antitrust in the late 90’s is the reason so many other dominant tech companies were able to get a foothold in the 5-10 years following. Which also points to why we are in today’s predicament, having abandoned antitrust entirely.
        jamessb 6y ago
        > founded and quickly after conquered the internet with its search engine and internet browser Google didn't release the first version of Chrome until 2008, 10 years later.
        erpellan 6y ago
ross2990 6y ago
When JEDI was first proposed, AWS had already been the vast majority of cloud services for the Intelligence community. This led to them having a distinct advantage because they already had the certified infrastructure to handle US Secret and Top Secret information. This was (in my own thoughts) why that immediate capability was stressed so much in the initial request for proposal.
- sailfast 6y ago
  First off - I don't know that it's normal for a competing company in a protest to post a press release like this. I know things have gotten nuts recently and people protest for giggles these days, but this seems... weird. I also wonder to a certain extent why additional ceiling was not added under the current vehicle to do this if AWS was the preferred solution. MOUs signed, dollars routed, etc seems to be the easiest route rather than a massive procurement for something like this. It doesn't make any sense unless they're awarding an entirely new data center. It also sounds like there's a disagreement about a core requirement / availability definitions which significantly impact storage costs, which obviously would change one's bid? https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480585/AWS-hits-out-at-narrow-scope-of-DoDs-planned-re-evaluation-of-JEDI-cloud-contract https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480585/AWS-hits-out-a... DoD IG Report on the process: https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Joint-Enterprise-Defense-Infrastructure-Jedi-Cloud-Procurement-Dodig-2020-079#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Join...
- partiallypro 6y ago
  More likely the Amazon lobbied hard to make requirements a barrier to entry: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-review-amazon-employees-influence-over-billion-government-contract/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-... https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-department-jedi-contract/ https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-departmen... https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/DoDs-JEDI-cloud-contract-favors-AWS-with-Microsoft-on-deck https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/D...
- blackflame7000 6y ago
roel_v 6y ago
Having been on the winning side of a contract once for a bid that was clearly 100% written by a competitor, the Big Dog in our industry, in such a way that they absolutely thought only they could ever be meeting the terms - and then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, I can a little bit imagine how satisfying this win must have been for the Microsoft bid manager or whatever they'd be called. And my project was only 6 digits.
- wahern 6y ago
  > then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, Did you actually deliver on time and on budget?
  - 23B1 6y ago
    crickets heh
  - roel_v 6y ago
    Just a little over time, and it was fixed budget. Timing wise still much better than the norm in our industry.
caseysoftware 6y ago
More precisely, it looks like Amazon hired the DOD guy who helped write the scope. Being involved in those pre-RFP discussions, understanding the reasoning, and secondary undocumented concerns would be immensely valuable.
- partiallypro 6y ago
  And Bezos sits on the Pentagon defense innovation advisory board. Eric Schmidt is the chairman, but he's no longer with Google, and GCS is probably too young for the Pentagon for this sort of use case.
koheripbal 6y ago
Amazon has put a LOT of money into DC. From setting up an HQ2 in DC to Bezos personally purchasing the largest mansion in the city to host event for political power brokers. It should be no surprise that he's pissed that that amount of investment isn't starting to pay dividends.
- GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
  Not to mention the newspaper.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    It's worth not mentioning.
    - GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
      Do you think he bought it because he really likes journalism?
      - chadcmulligan 6y ago
        Here's an interview with him here about it [1] It seems he had a mix of reasons, he says. No doubt now that it's a functioning entity he has an added bonus. I remember at the time though most people thought he was throwing good money after bad. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/09/19/why-jeff-bezos-bought-the-washington-post/#3335b1163aab https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/09/19/why...
        GCSAQCMIYI 6y ago
        The reasons he gives for buying it don't tell us anything. His net worth is in the 12 figures. Everything he says publicly is crafted by a well paid and highly competent PR team. If he bought it to gain political influence, which seems to me the only reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or for any other reason that would put him in a bad light, he would not in a million years come out and say that openly.
IAmEveryone 6y ago
There's considerable evidence that Amazon lost this because the President doesn't like The Washington Post. Even assuming the accusations against Amazon are true as well: what's worse? (a) A vendor gaining unfair advantage and overcharging by 10%? Or, (b), the President using the power of the federal government to punish journalists for criticising him? The Washington Post was, by the way, the newspaper that uncovered that the Trump Foundation had spent their complete budget at Trump properties or for personal expenditures such as the famous painting. This was several million $, all donated by members of the public, ostensibly intended to help veterans. These accusations lead to a court case, which the foundation lost, requiring it to be shut down and his children being barred from serving on non-profit boards in the future. So, to answer the choice from the beginning: if you choose (b) and allow the WashPo and other media to be pressured into silence, you'll lose the free press and still get the corruption.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Mind linking to or sharing some of the evidence for b? I had heard rumors about that on reddit, but hadn't seen anything concrete.
guru4consulting 6y ago
Btw, this is a widely known practice (not sure if it's legally accepted though). Government contractors often play a big role in shaping the RFI/RFP requirements. This is a multi-year process that involves socializing, discovering the legacy/obsolete systems in client environment, learning about their business side, identifying pain points in the gov customer side, etc. Big contractors like Raytheon, CACI, SAIC have a well-defined and stream-lined process for this. This is where smaller contractors or startups find it very difficult to get into gov contracting because they don't have the kind of access that Raytheon/CACI has. So, I don't see any surprise in AWS giving inputs for shaping DoD requirements. Cutting all the politics and legalities, is n't AWS superior to Azure? I guess Azure's major revenue is still from MS-office subscriptions, but AWS is more battled hardened, more reliable and has more variety of services than Azure. At least, that's my perception.
lstroud 6y ago
That said, from a citizens standpoint, if the government is going to only pick one, I can’t imagine it not being AWS. The difference in capability and capacity isn’t within an order of magnitude.

voz_ 6y ago

Good writeup. Looks like a very interesting case. The more I read about Amazon, the more I detest them.

gaukes 6y ago

> Even if you believe that Amazon may have started as the front runner, it’s clear our team worked hard to catch up and surpass them by investing in our technology and listening to the DoD. Is MSFT actually ahead?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Define "ahead". Is AWS cutting edge? Maybe, but does your business need cutting edge? Likely not. I see an enormous shift in the market towards Azure from clients of all sizes, for a variety of reasons (cost, married to AD/O365/etc, not wanting to give a competitor [Amazon] dollars). Azure definitely has the momentum, it's their race to lose against AWS. Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions my own, not that of any employer past, current, or future.
- thisisnico 6y ago
  Microsoft can offer fully-integrated solutions with their already incredibly popular software. So that's a distinct advantage.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Azure is less friendly as a technology practitioner (compared to working with AWS), but I fully appreciate the value you describe. Does AWS have Active Directory as a first class citizen? Office 365? Outlook/Exchange? No.
    - chucky_z 6y ago
      AWS does offer AD as a first class citizen... More than Azure. AzureAD is not Active Directory, and unless something has changed a lot in the last year (maybe it has?), Azure does not offer anything that looks, smells, and feels like on-prem AD in the cloud.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

ceejayoz 6y ago

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-trump-contract-187850 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... > The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.

wnevets 6y ago
>barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews So probably yes.
eganist 6y ago
I mean, in an ideal world I'd think this would be an automatic DQ, but we live in the darkest timeline.
caseysoftware 6y ago
A quote past the first paragraph of the story: > the IG said "we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated proposals and made the source-selection awarding Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured about their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House." As with most articles, the juicy, salacious lines are at the beginning but the real details are 10 paragraphs in. Based on the following paragraphs, the IG did find evidence of ethical misconduct by Amazon as they hired the DOD guy who helped form the JEDI program.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  "The evidence we received" is fairly meaningless when coupled with "we weren't allowed to obtain the evidence we wanted".
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    I've lived through an IG investigation. You generally only want to respond in writing so you give a correct and complete answer instead of misspeaking and having it used against you, your project, or agency later on. It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.

sbussard 6y ago

I get the feeling that unless Amazon finds some integrity they will not last long as a company. If you read Blind, they're the company that everyone loves to hate - even their own employees.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> there is a very specific issue before the court at the moment. It may seem arcane and procedural, but the back-and-forth arguments between Amazon and the government raise a key question of principle and fairness that should matter to us all. Namely, should a company—like Amazon—that bid high and lost, now get a do-over, especially now—as the IG’s report makes clear—Amazon received additional proprietary information about Microsoft’s bid that it should never have had. Actually, I don't really see the problem. There are two hypothetical models: 1. Everyone gets to bid for the work once, and if they get it wrong, too bad for them. What's right and what's wrong? Depends on your point of view. What matters is that everyone got the same single chance to bid for a government contract. 2. Everyone bids for the contract. If their bid isn't being accepted, they're free to adjust it. What matters is what the terms ultimately are, not what they were at the start of bidding. You may recognize that second model as the normal way everything is sold everywhere. What's supposed to be wrong with Amazon quoting a price for something, not getting a sale, and then lowering the price? We should hope they do, and that Microsoft responds by lowering their price even more.

roel_v 6y ago
Of course you can construct an argument for anything if you can just make up things. The fact here is that there is only one reality: your option 1. Those are the rules for any closed bid procurement processes. Who is going to bid for anything if they know they will be in a race to the bottom even after spending all their time on the initial bid?
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  People who expect to be able to turn a profit at their quoted price will bid. Just like everything else. Who's supposedly benefiting from these rules? Why would we be interested in following them?
partiallypro 6y ago
Isn't the point though that Amazon knew about Microsoft's bid and other proprietary elements and STILL bid high (while Microsoft was blind to Amazon's?) They already had the advantage of information. #2 has already effectively happened.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

steve19 6y ago

This misses the point. All large DoD contract are usually followed by a lawsuit from the loser. I have seen this happens so many times. If MSFT lost, they would have probably sued.

pnw_hazor 6y ago
Yes, it is normal. Even small government RFP contracts often have do-overs when losers challenge the results. I remember when Boeing first was awarded the US Air Force tanker contract. It was soon rescinded for, among other things, fraud. They won the project again the second time around. Recently, the US Air Force has refused delivery of the tankers because of manufacturing flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  More complicated than that. Northrop Grumman and EADS/Airbus in a joint bid won with a more capable platform, it was then redone due to Boeing protesting. In the redo Boeing won. Comparatively the A330 MRRT, which the first round winning bid was based on entered service June 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
solidasparagus 6y ago
This comment misses the point. How many other government contracts have the presumed favorite lose after the President made multiple statements saying that he would do everything in his power to screw over the favorite? And AWS losing IS an upset. I've spent a lot of time around government contracting and this whole bid process was mind-boggling badly handled by the government. The number of conflicts-of-interests involved throughout the process are absurd.

mullingitover 6y ago

Command+F 'Trump' -> 0 results They seem to be ignoring the massive elephant in the room, where there was political intrigue and a personal vendetta interfering in what's supposed to be an apolitical process[1]. > "I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon; they're saying it wasn't competitively bid," Trump told reporters on July 18. "I will be asking them to take a look at it very closely to see what's going on because I have had very few things where there's been such complaining." The fact that DoD officials were gagged from providing truthful testimony should automatically result in the results being thrown out. They wouldn't be gagged if they were going to say something helpful to Microsoft. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747374991/pentagon-pauses-10-billion-cloud-contract-after-months-of-controversy https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747374991/pentagon-pauses-10-...

bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
"Amazon would have you believe that it lost the award because of bias at the highest levels of government." Maybe you should expand your search terms, or, you know, RTFA.

TomMckenny 6y ago

DoD officials are barred from answering questions about White House influence on the decision owing to its assertion of "presidential communications privilege"[1]. This is, quite simply, a confession. Nothing is solved by believing that the administration is somehow different than the dozen or so near identical leaders in other countries: that somehow this one uniquely is not pressuring companies hostile to it (in spite of the fact it has already publicly done so[2][3]). And while a deferential Amazon might be bad, it's really something you'd want to nip in the bud before Google or Facebook become too terrified of the white house. [1]https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-trump-contract-187850 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/06/would-the-trump-administration-block-a-merger-just-to-punish-cnn/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/06/w... [3]https://www.wsj.com/articles/snag-in-media-merger-stirs-tensions-over-trump-cnn-feud-1510354324 https://www.wsj.com/articles/snag-in-media-merger-stirs-tens...

23B1 6y ago
> This is, quite simply, a confession. That's like saying pleading the 5th is a confession...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- belltaco 6y ago
  I mean, the President himself said multiple times that pleading the 5th meant one was guilty.
- TomMckenny 6y ago
  It's not a trial, it's the public asking their government to tell them what's going on in this matter. And the government flatly refused. From this, it's absolutely reasonable for the public to think its government is hiding something now. And it's an order to _others_ in the DoD to remain silent. If it were a trial, this is ordering potential witnesses to remain silent on threat of termination. What the White House is saying by claiming presidential privileged is 1) the president did indeed discuss it, which in itself is problematic and 2) that discussion is on par with a national security issue, which is an additional abuse of power. As an aside, the 5th exists to prevent coerced confessions. In court, it is not to be taken as a sign of guilt because if it were, the point of the law would be moot. Where no court (or police) are involved, there is no possibility of coerced confession. Which is why everyone correctly views refusing to answer questions to friends, parents or reporters as very much a sign of guilt. And why confessions signed in police stations are very suspicious in many people's eyes. It certainly does not allow a government to refuse to answer to its people.

gpm 6y ago

> A central premise of the federal procurement system is that “full and fair competition“ on a “level playing field“ means that competitors are asked to make their best bids without knowing what the other has bid or will bid. That principle ensures that companies seeking to do business with the federal government offer their best price from the beginning. No, it doesn't. This is known as a first-price sealed bid auction. It guarantees they will roughly speaking offer the government the highest price they think they will win at, not their lowest price. For a more detailed analysis see the wikipedia aritcle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_auction The "standard" (mathematical) answer to getting this property would be to run a second-price sealed bid auction, where the winner is the player with the lowest bid, but they get paid the amount of the second lowest bid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.

mrslave 6y ago

When losing a deal worth $1 billion/year for 10 years (gross, of course) the right course of action is to sue the customer, hoping to then win them as a customer. One rule for the rulers and another for the ruled.

marzell 6y ago

JEDI aside, I feel like Azure has grown in leaps and bounds... meanwhile AWS has rested on its laurels because they were the first major cloud and so many people adopted them early and either are stuck or in denial about where Azure is at. Even Microsoft shops that would benefit from tighter integrations and quicker feature releases seem to only really consider Azure an afterthought and will use GCP for specialty cases in lieu of AWS. I'm not trying to be a fanboy for MS, but I've found Azure much easier to adopt personally, and their tooling especially around databases can work really well. With AWS I feel like with every service I have to try out 3 or 4 third party tools for development which causes a ton of overhead and risk of using a tool that changes direction or stops meaningful development. Whenever I try to challenge the status quo people at work react like I'm an idiot. Although, I'm not suggesting to a heavily-invested org that they should switch clouds, but just asking questions like why we are heavily using RDS SQL Server when Azure SQL-whatever-version-you-want would work even better and often cheaper.

rpedela 6y ago
I will buy SQL Server specifically, but if you are using MySQL or Postgres then AWS is still the clear winner in my book. RDS is great and Aurora is even better, and serverless...wow. Both Azure's and GCP's managed database offerings don't match up if using MySQL or Postgres.
- kevsim 6y ago
  How does RDS Postgres beat GCP hosted Postgres? Genuinely curious as we're running on GCP and I'm wondering what we're missing out on.
  - rpedela 6y ago
    Turnaround time for supporting the latest version on RDS is faster, and RDS supports more extensions. Then if you need to scale you have Aurora.
beerandt 6y ago
Strong-arming Office 365 onto companies was also pretty brilliant, in that it forced every company/org that uses Office to at least investigate the MS ecosystem. And by a person who likely holds at least some sway over purchasing power and infrastructure decisions. And how many companies don't use Office at all?

smitty1e 6y ago

No. The government should have multiple cloud providers.

Ericson2314 6y ago
No. They should run almost everything in-house so it can be properly integrated.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  Isn't the usual business of government to rotate every 5-10 years? - In house is the way to go! - No the pervious administration was wrong - outsourcing is the way to go Lather, rinse, repeat
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    With anything relating to advance technology I think the systematic outsourcing has been prevalent since at least WWII.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  Like they do now? That hasn't worked out so hot for integration...
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Not like they do now. If it was, you and I would know more about it because the infra would be required to be open source public domain
    - solidasparagus 6y ago
      What? Why do you think info about Top Secret-ready infrastructure would be public domain?
      - 6y ago

pnw_hazor 6y ago

I wouldn't get too excited about a PR letter from a Microsoft lawyer. IBM and Oracle made early protests that were dismissed, but Amazon's was sustained. Note, Oracle is appealing the dismissal of its protest. This is regarding the injunction that is in place now: In the ruling, the judge said Amazon was likely to show that Microsoft offered a “noncompliant storage solution” to reduce the costs of its JEDI bid and that the Pentagon “erred” by not issuing a “deficiency” to Microsoft’s proposal. The judge concluded that Amazon’s “chances of receiving the award would have increased absent [the Pentagon’s] evaluation error.” https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/03/amazon-quite-likely-prove-pentagon-made-evaluation-error-jedi-cloud-contract-judge-says/163610/ https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/03/amazon-quit...

krtong 6y ago

The government has always and will always pick winners and losers. It's that simple.

jsnider3 6y ago

It lost because Trump hates Jeff Bezos for some reason.

krapp 6y ago
>It lost because Trump hates Jeff Bezos for some reason. Bezos is a Democrat and owner of the Washington Post, a paper which has been openly critical of Trump's administration.
- jsnider3 6y ago
  Bezos is not a Democrat, but yes WaPo like all reputable journalists has been critical of Trump.

Rafuino 6y ago

"Much of the $1 billion (USD) we spend on security each year goes toward Azure. Even if you believe that Amazon may have started as the front runner, it’s clear our team worked hard to catch up and surpass them by investing in our technology and listening to the DoD." How much does Amazon spend as a company on "security" and how much of it goes to AWS, specifically? Interesting talking point, but worthless without a real comparison. Also, "we delivered new innovations including native edge devices that can withstand the challenging environments in which the DoD operates." What the heck is a "native edge device"? Is it a server hosted on the back of a drone? Is it fortified compute hosted in a storage container in a forward operating base? Is it just Azure Stack HCI on a warship? Really interested in that one.

tomohawk 6y ago

The DOD made a big mistake here. They should have let several cloud contracts, or a contract that enables use of diverse cloud providers. Instead, they made a contract that is too big to lose.

acruns 6y ago

This is SOP for a contract like this. I worked in this field for over a decade before I went back to straight consulting. Helping or ever writing a RFP / RFI / proposal for a customer is not unheard of. I was given the opportunity to provide input on more than one occasion and would certainly include requirements I knew competitors could not functionally meet, in esence eliminating all other competitors. They could respond but when the technical team members meet with project sponsors and there is a big red square on the scorecard in the competitors column indicating they can't meet a requirement what is a SVP going to say? 'We don't need that'? They aren't technical and even if they ask about it we clearly have internal support for our product and can count on the technical team explaining why our feature is a requirement. (We just so happen to have the best product so this wasn't much of stretch.) The only difference between the private sector and gov is we can't take them out to a $3000 dinner to discuss the requirements before they submit them. As you can tell, this is a "bit" sleazy, while still mostly truthful we are clearly trying to influence the outcome in our favor. Having worked with the OIG (office inspector general), more than one of them, they are as much a political animal as any other office in DC, more so in lots of ways, so getting a report from them that says what you want is just a matter of phone calls and dinners with the right ppl. AWS got played, plain and simple. They thought they were going to win and probably didn't do as mush as they should have to make sure they could win, and at the same time underestimated Microsoft. Just bc Azure was new to the DOD doesn't mean its new to the feds, I worked on several projects in AZ with the feds, and MSFT is not new to DC, they have been playing in DC politics for decades, and doing so very successfully. Which I am guessing from my outside view was AWS / Jeff's mistake. Buying a mansion and hosting partys in DC and a amateur move. There are a lot of very powerful ppl in DC that are former MSFT employees. It is very common practice to move from MSFT's fed teams to a fairly high position in a fed agency for your 20 years to get you retirement plan completed.

zimbatm 6y ago

Does anyone know what the nature of that proprietary information is?

bid_high 6y ago

"Microsoft won the JEDI contract because the Department of Defense found that we offered “significantly superior” technology at a better price." Umm.. what? Are they mentally impaired? I recently tried doing something very simple - use the QnA Maker. You should check it out for yourself - the number of clicks needed to do something as simple as this makes me question all the comments I see these days that say "Azure is as good as AWS". No, it is not. It is a lot more complex for simple tasks, and looks like it has been assembled together by a bunch of monkeys.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jeffrallen 6y ago

Two ugly gorillas fighting for the bananas held out by a war monger. Whatever.