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.
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.
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
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.
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.
That is nowhere close to how ruthlessly they crushed competitors well before that. Microsoft are why you've probably never heard of Supercalc, Lotus/123 and WordPerfect. All superior products in the 80s and 90s, all crushed by MS strong-arm tactics of forcing PC manufacturers to sell machines with Windows and Office pre-installed.
They even destroyed companies they weren't even competing with, but thought they _might_ want to later! All MS needed to do was issue a vague press release that they were working on a competitor to [some successful software product] and all the customers would hold off on purchases until the original (successful) company went bankrupt. Many times MS never ever released anything, leaving everyone worse off.
So yeah. They seem nicer now, but they climbed over a lot of dead companies to get here.
> not "every dominant giant company ever" has been found by U.S. federal court
That's only because as times changed so did the US mostly lost interest in punishing or even investigating its own companies (that's subjectively understandable, nobody wants to hit their own). Voices say they're trying to change this, we'll just have to wait and see.
On the other hand I'm sure you agree that "U.S. federal court" is not the global standard in justice. And since the EU has no "home player" bias their courts did not shy away from investigating and fining big-tech monopolies like Google or Facebook.
"Playing dumb" and conflating Microsoft with exclusivity in the abuse of market position doesn't do this discussion any service. Your comment is strongly undermined by this clear bias.
it's been long enough you may not even see this, but i appreciated the fair, well-reasoned response so i figured i would respond (paragraph-by-paragraph correspondence to your comment above):
- fair enough point, i agree that it is debatable whether Microsoft was "particularly deserving" of this reputation because of the limited scope and interest of the justice dept., etc., though on balance i still _personally_ find it most likely that they stood out in their bad-actor-ness in some way
- wtf is a "global standard in justice"? the existence of that is news to me. unless it is rather just "whatever court makes the kinds of judgments i agree with"? if the EU judicial process (to determine whether the EU should fine some exogenous bag of money an enormous amount of money) is so impartial, then why was their biggest upshot to put Margrethe Vestager, a maximally-ambitious politician, on the map? i know you're just trying to suggest an alternate judicial authority, but come on: you picked one that is even less likely to have been a "global standard in justice", whatever that is. and that all is to apparently exonerate Microsoft because a couple other companies, that grew up in Microsoft's shadow, used the same playbook later on?
- though i appreciate the argumentative tone / parallelism thing going on here, i think it's a biit of a stretch in this case-- i don't really feel like i'm conflating them at all. the valence of my comment is definitely that "Microsoft deserves to stand out here", not that they are uniquely guilty of this by any measure.
and, re bias: ultimately, insofar as i am "biased" (an affliction that actually affects everyone, regardless of opinion :^) it is because they (Microsoft) hurt my feelings by doing a bunch of mean things to technologically-related stuff that i loved during my techno-formative years. so, yeah--their abuses of market power stood out more to me than they may have to others, and are clearly grounded in a personal, subjective value judgment. the world still revolved then, and still continues to revolve-- there are more important abuses of power to be truly exercised about in the world, etc., etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.
Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish?
Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.
You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.
Of course academia is a "radical left" arena, as it's the domain of our youth and that is a natural expression of their view of the world.
All news has bias, but some are more biased than others, and that bias varies from personal and ingrained to organizational and intentional. It's important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
Project Veritas is a right-wing, extremely partisan organization with a shady history. They are not an organization that I would trust.
We're in dangerous political territory, so I'll preface my question in the context of being genuinely curious and not judgmental (of you).
My awareness of him is from several "stunts" where he "went undercover" and interviewed his targets surreptitiously and then dishonestly edited the results to support his ideological narrative.
I associate cable news with general incompetence, corporate shilling and whatnot, but generally a "noisy" signal. PV, on the other hand, is driven purely by right-wing ideological goals.
That is amazing. How did you get all WP employees to agree to let you leave brain scan machines hooked up to them for the past 7 years?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Bezos is handing down fiats. He's an extremely competent executive. That is not the most effective means of getting what you want out of every type of person in every situation. He knows that, and he also knows many alternative ways of influencing behavior.
> This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend
Amazons share price has grown 136,000% in the past 23 years or 36.8% per year. That is far above S&P 500 returns and the exact case for when you want a company reinvesting in themself instead of paying out dividends.
I am quite surprised by the downvotes here. They almost make me think that people are being paid to create an appearance of a pro-Amazon/pro-Bezos consensus on this site.
I wasn't defending Bezos - just putting forward the situation at the time. I feel the idea that this is some brilliant forward plan of domination isn't correct, sure it was a possibility but the element of risk was one that everyone else walked away from. Respect to him for that, having said that, I disagree with a lot of his business practices, but that seems to be the current business environment - he's just working within the rules. The rules need to change.
IBM and Oracle also protested the bidding/RFP process. Their protests were dismissed twice so far. Once by the agency and again by a judge. Oracle has appealed the judge's dismissal of their protest.
In contrast, Amazon's protest resulted in an injunction because the judge determined it was likely Amazon would prevail in trial.
You are mixing up "DC the actual city" and "DC as a synonym for politics".
DoD couldn't care less about Bezos' mansion or HQ2's impact on the city's economy.
And running a newspaper that continuously annoys a President doesn't really fit the apparently popular idea that Bezos is spending money to get favourable treatment from politicians.
Especially when that politician you're annoying is known to have a somewhat vindictive streak and doesn't quite grok the difference between being entrusted money and power to use on behalf of a country and owning money and spending it in his own interest
>And running a newspaper that continuously annoys a President doesn't really fit the apparently popular idea that Bezos is spending money to get favourable treatment from politicians.
At least from outward appearances, most of the ruling class and permanent government isn't particularly fond of the current President.
That's what our current President and his "deep state" wants you to believe. However, after three + years it's pretty obvious that our President has a firm grip on power. He still plays the victim every once in a while. But all the departments are quite clearly bowing and pleasing him as best they can.
Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.
Slightly off-topic, but if you consider that 90% of "mainstream" media is owned by 6 huge corporations, which are interested in maintaining crony capitalism (of which the state is a central player) - then it would not be completely outlandish to think that the press is kinda part of state (conceptually speaking)
it's the difference between explicit and invisible force. people in favour of capitalism (in all its forms) consider the invisible forces "the way the world works".
Eh, fair point that the epidemics were different scales, when I first saw that comparison they were still fairly close in terms of impact to the States.
Still, it seems to me that the Trump administration originally clearly wanted to go for a 'herd immunity' strategy and changed it due to political rather than practical considerations. I'm quite sure that if it had the relationship with the fifth estate that, say, the Biden campaign enjoys, there would have been very little political fallout as a result. The press has managed the truth far more aggressively for other administrations.
Seems it's less a 'party' and more a networking event where I'm sure your competitors are not invited. Also less 'your own dime' and more a business expense that helps Bezos skirt even more taxes. I can't see it as an investment in the city.
Maybe if he bought and renovated an apartment building. Held events in a top floor space. Transformed the lobby into a community business and tech center.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Azure Active Directory Domain Services is full-fat AD, but they market it towards only using it for services in Azure. But you can set up a VPN from Azure to join on-prem stuff (or to replicate existing AD to Azure).
That's good to hear! I really wanted "hosted AD" from a cloud a few years ago, and Azure definitely did not offer this... or they marketed it so poorly I could not find it anywhere. :(
AWS has straight up guides for do's/dont's, and various ways to integrate their AD service with yours, including multiple scenarios such as running them as the masters of the forest, with read-only's on-site, and vice-versa.
Maybe not on the raw technology for edge cases, but in terms of actually supporting DoD business needs it is for sure. I have worked for two branches in the past 4 years assisting in migration to Office365 and certain legacy database systems into Azure. The vast majority of legacy IT in the DoD essentially supports AD/Office/Exchange which is far easier to migrate.
Microsoft is losing big time to Linux and open source. They are basically being forced to implement Linux inside Windows, because Windows sucks at automation and scaling, and Linux is now the dominant technology in enterprise. Vendors like Microsoft don't sell software because it is superior, they do it because they can buy the signature of whoever can make the decision.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
There's no indication they answered the questions in a written form; it appears quite clear the White House asserted privilege, which would apply to any form of questioning.
So unless you can show that the questions they were barred from answering on the subject during their interviews were, in fact, responded to in writing later (which I haven't heard of happening)... then the distinction you're drawing doesn't seem to be relevant here, right?
That sentence seems purpose-build to be so obviously trying to hide the truth as to be giving it away.
It means the "DoD personnel who evaluated proposals" were not pressured by senior DoD leaders, but by White House officials directly.
Or why would the statement explicitly mention "DoD leaders more senior to them"? If they were not pressured, why not simply say "DoD personnel were not pressured to award..."? And why would they be barred from testifying?
This is the sort of thing I think of when I hear the term "fake news". Sentences that get buried, sentences that get purposefully constructed in order to obscure/misdirect, etc. Personally, I don't care for an article or piece to be "artistic" in any way, they just need to give us facts and explanations, along with all the things they tried to ask, what they investigated, what info they weren't able to find, etc. Journalism shouldn't be an art, it should be a form of fact condensation and transference, aimed at a broad audience.
"However, we concluded that Mr. Ubhi’s brief early involvement in the JEDI Cloud Initiative was not substantial and did not provide any advantage to his prospective employer, Amazon, in the later JEDI Cloud contract competition, which was decided two years after Mr. Ubhi’s resignation from the DoD. Although Mr. Ubhi’s actions from September through October 2017 was misconduct, his minimal contributions to the JEDI procurement process did not affect the conduct or outcome of the JEDI Cloud source selection."
JEDI ROI, Page 8, Paragraph 3
"We sought to review whether there was any White House influence on the JEDI cloud
procurement. We could not review this matter fully because of the assertion of a “presidential
communications privilege,” which resulted in several DoD witnesses being instructed by the DoD Office
of General Counsel not to answer our questions about potential communications between White House
and DoD officials about JEDI. Therefore, we could not definitively determine the full extent or nature of
interactions that administration officials had, or may have had, with senior DoD officials regarding the
JEDI Cloud procurement.
We provided the DoD Office of General Counsel with a list of questions, separated specific to
each witness, and requested that they convey these questions to the White House Counsel’s Office for
review and determination as to whether the White House would in fact invoke the presidential
communications privilege. The DoD Office of General Counsel told us they then asked White House
Counsel to review the list of questions and identify the subject areas, or specific questions, over which
the President would assert the presidential communications privilege.
After our repeated requests for a response, on February 25, 2020, the DoD Office of General
Counsel stated that White House Counsel was only willing to allow witnesses to provide written answers
to our questions where the presidential communications privilege was invoked; however, it stated that
no representation could be made as to the number or extent of questions that could be answered, and
that any written responses would require further review by White House Counsel on the issue of
maintaining the privilege. We carefully considered this response and concluded it would not be an
appropriate and practical way to conduct our review, because there was no assurance as to which
questions would be answered, it would unduly delay the report, it would not allow for an interview and
inevitable follow up questions, and it would not assure that we would be receiving full information from
the witnesses. We therefore declined to proceed in this manner. We further discuss the details
regarding this matter in Section III below.
However, we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated
the contract proposals and awarded Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured regarding
their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have
communicated with the White House. We interviewed the personnel involved in the factor evaluation
and source selection processes, including factor and selection board chairs, the Source Selection
Authority, and the Procuring Contracting Officer. Most of their identities and involvement in the
procurement award were unknown to White House staff and even to the senior DoD officials. None of
these witnesses told us they felt any outside influence or pressure for or against a particular competitor as they made their decisions on the award of the contract. These witnesses also told us that public statements from the President and “media swirl” about the contract did not directly or indirectly
influence the integrity of the procurement process or the outcome of the JEDI Cloud source selection.
Yet, these media reports, and the reports of President Trump’s statements about Amazon,
ongoing bid protests and “lobbying” by JEDI Cloud competitors, as well as inaccurate media reports
about the JEDI Cloud procurement process, may have created the appearance or perception that the
contract award process was not fair or unbiased."
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.
> 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.
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?
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?
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.
I don't think Amazon knew about Microsoft's bid before the result was announced. Looks like the DoD folks did not redact a bunch of things properly while disclosing the winner information to Amazon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are other reasons, inside government, to maintain privileged information, e.g. 'legitimate secrets' and of course to protect precedent. You don't want to burn down those principles for just anything.
Government contracts can be awarded to politically supportive entities and denied to those that aren't. Of course in a nicely functioning democracy there is little reason to believe this happening.
But when the head of government intervenes in the process for no clear reasons and then refuses to explain what that intervention was or why it happened or allow anyone else to comment; and when this is defended as remaining silent because speaking "may tend to incriminate" ala the 5th amendment, then it is clear there was grossly inappropriate intervention.
The issue is not whether Amazon or Microsoft win the contract. The issue is whether contract awards are going to be used to force companies to support and obey the party in power. That and the causally related "it can't happen here" mind set.
> 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
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
I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You would think there is a loophole for classified documents, but it is not mentioned there. They may be a perverse incentive to contract out so it can be secret-ish.
I think what you're referring to is the copyright status of government work. Just because it is not copyrightable does not mean it is publicly available.
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.”
"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.
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.
"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.
155 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] threadI'm not picking on you as an individual, but there's great justice in Microsoft suffering this.
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
Which also points to why we are in today’s predicament, having abandoned antitrust entirely.
Google didn't release the first version of Chrome until 2008, 10 years later.
They even destroyed companies they weren't even competing with, but thought they _might_ want to later! All MS needed to do was issue a vague press release that they were working on a competitor to [some successful software product] and all the customers would hold off on purchases until the original (successful) company went bankrupt. Many times MS never ever released anything, leaving everyone worse off.
So yeah. They seem nicer now, but they climbed over a lot of dead companies to get here.
That's only because as times changed so did the US mostly lost interest in punishing or even investigating its own companies (that's subjectively understandable, nobody wants to hit their own). Voices say they're trying to change this, we'll just have to wait and see.
On the other hand I'm sure you agree that "U.S. federal court" is not the global standard in justice. And since the EU has no "home player" bias their courts did not shy away from investigating and fining big-tech monopolies like Google or Facebook.
"Playing dumb" and conflating Microsoft with exclusivity in the abuse of market position doesn't do this discussion any service. Your comment is strongly undermined by this clear bias.
- fair enough point, i agree that it is debatable whether Microsoft was "particularly deserving" of this reputation because of the limited scope and interest of the justice dept., etc., though on balance i still _personally_ find it most likely that they stood out in their bad-actor-ness in some way
- wtf is a "global standard in justice"? the existence of that is news to me. unless it is rather just "whatever court makes the kinds of judgments i agree with"? if the EU judicial process (to determine whether the EU should fine some exogenous bag of money an enormous amount of money) is so impartial, then why was their biggest upshot to put Margrethe Vestager, a maximally-ambitious politician, on the map? i know you're just trying to suggest an alternate judicial authority, but come on: you picked one that is even less likely to have been a "global standard in justice", whatever that is. and that all is to apparently exonerate Microsoft because a couple other companies, that grew up in Microsoft's shadow, used the same playbook later on?
- though i appreciate the argumentative tone / parallelism thing going on here, i think it's a biit of a stretch in this case-- i don't really feel like i'm conflating them at all. the valence of my comment is definitely that "Microsoft deserves to stand out here", not that they are uniquely guilty of this by any measure.
and, re bias: ultimately, insofar as i am "biased" (an affliction that actually affects everyone, regardless of opinion :^) it is because they (Microsoft) hurt my feelings by doing a bunch of mean things to technologically-related stuff that i loved during my techno-formative years. so, yeah--their abuses of market power stood out more to me than they may have to others, and are clearly grounded in a personal, subjective value judgment. the world still revolved then, and still continues to revolve-- there are more important abuses of power to be truly exercised about in the world, etc., etc.
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-a...
DoD IG Report on the process: https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Join...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-...
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-departmen...
https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/D...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...
... and AWS GovCloud [0].
---
[0]: https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/government/
Did you actually deliver on time and on budget?
It should be no surprise that he's pissed that that amount of investment isn't starting to pay dividends.
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...
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.
Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.
You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.
There is a mindset that dominates academia and carries on into the media.
It is reflected in the political donations of journalists.
And the distribution of the story bias.
It perhaps one should say "stunning lack of anything resembling a distribution".
All news has bias, but some are more biased than others, and that bias varies from personal and ingrained to organizational and intentional. It's important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
Project Veritas is a right-wing, extremely partisan organization with a shady history. They are not an organization that I would trust.
My awareness of him is from several "stunts" where he "went undercover" and interviewed his targets surreptitiously and then dishonestly edited the results to support his ideological narrative.
I associate cable news with general incompetence, corporate shilling and whatnot, but generally a "noisy" signal. PV, on the other hand, is driven purely by right-wing ideological goals.
That is amazing. How did you get all WP employees to agree to let you leave brain scan machines hooked up to them for the past 7 years?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Bezos is handing down fiats. He's an extremely competent executive. That is not the most effective means of getting what you want out of every type of person in every situation. He knows that, and he also knows many alternative ways of influencing behavior.
Amazons share price has grown 136,000% in the past 23 years or 36.8% per year. That is far above S&P 500 returns and the exact case for when you want a company reinvesting in themself instead of paying out dividends.
I've experienced copious carpet bombings for deviations from the Received Truth, however mild and documented.
In contrast, Amazon's protest resulted in an injunction because the judge determined it was likely Amazon would prevail in trial.
DoD couldn't care less about Bezos' mansion or HQ2's impact on the city's economy.
And running a newspaper that continuously annoys a President doesn't really fit the apparently popular idea that Bezos is spending money to get favourable treatment from politicians.
Especially when that politician you're annoying is known to have a somewhat vindictive streak and doesn't quite grok the difference between being entrusted money and power to use on behalf of a country and owning money and spending it in his own interest
At least from outward appearances, most of the ruling class and permanent government isn't particularly fond of the current President.
Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...
Still, it seems to me that the Trump administration originally clearly wanted to go for a 'herd immunity' strategy and changed it due to political rather than practical considerations. I'm quite sure that if it had the relationship with the fifth estate that, say, the Biden campaign enjoys, there would have been very little political fallout as a result. The press has managed the truth far more aggressively for other administrations.
Try continuously. Every problem is someone else's fault, and every success is solely because of him.
How do you know that?
Maybe if he bought and renovated an apartment building. Held events in a top floor space. Transformed the lobby into a community business and tech center.
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.
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.
Is MSFT actually ahead?
Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions my own, not that of any employer past, current, or future.
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.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-doma...
AWS has straight up guides for do's/dont's, and various ways to integrate their AD service with yours, including multiple scenarios such as running them as the masters of the forest, with read-only's on-site, and vice-versa.
But, maybe that was the intention without giving any details.
We’ll never know until office is separated out in MSFT reporting I guess.
> More than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies run Microsoft Azure.
For example, I worked at a large media company and we had a couple Azure services spun up related to our email service.
But the bulk was on AWS, which handled our business workloads — eg, serving video.
Is Microsoft counting my former employer among that 95%?
disclaimer: former aws, and always oss, and actually used aws/azure/gcp in anger
> 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.
So probably yes.
> 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.
It doesn't hold the legal consequences of screwing up an FBI interview but can be devastating professionally.
Senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews
The article asserts no answer; that they were forbidden to answer those questions. Written or otherwise.
There's no indication they answered the questions in a written form; it appears quite clear the White House asserted privilege, which would apply to any form of questioning.
>barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews.
vs
>barred from answering questions on the subject when asked questions on the subject.
vs
>barred from answering questions on the subject.
It's a limiting modifier phrase, so the default is to assume it was meant to modify the meaning.
It indicates the WH claimed privilege. Privilege applies to the questions/answers, not the medium in which they’re asked.
So unless you can show that the questions they were barred from answering on the subject during their interviews were, in fact, responded to in writing later (which I haven't heard of happening)... then the distinction you're drawing doesn't seem to be relevant here, right?
It means the "DoD personnel who evaluated proposals" were not pressured by senior DoD leaders, but by White House officials directly.
Or why would the statement explicitly mention "DoD leaders more senior to them"? If they were not pressured, why not simply say "DoD personnel were not pressured to award..."? And why would they be barred from testifying?
IG Report PDF https://media.defense.gov/2020/Apr/15/2002281438/-1/-1/1/REP...
"We sought to review whether there was any White House influence on the JEDI cloud procurement. We could not review this matter fully because of the assertion of a “presidential communications privilege,” which resulted in several DoD witnesses being instructed by the DoD Office of General Counsel not to answer our questions about potential communications between White House and DoD officials about JEDI. Therefore, we could not definitively determine the full extent or nature of interactions that administration officials had, or may have had, with senior DoD officials regarding the JEDI Cloud procurement.
We provided the DoD Office of General Counsel with a list of questions, separated specific to each witness, and requested that they convey these questions to the White House Counsel’s Office for review and determination as to whether the White House would in fact invoke the presidential communications privilege. The DoD Office of General Counsel told us they then asked White House Counsel to review the list of questions and identify the subject areas, or specific questions, over which the President would assert the presidential communications privilege.
After our repeated requests for a response, on February 25, 2020, the DoD Office of General Counsel stated that White House Counsel was only willing to allow witnesses to provide written answers to our questions where the presidential communications privilege was invoked; however, it stated that no representation could be made as to the number or extent of questions that could be answered, and that any written responses would require further review by White House Counsel on the issue of maintaining the privilege. We carefully considered this response and concluded it would not be an appropriate and practical way to conduct our review, because there was no assurance as to which questions would be answered, it would unduly delay the report, it would not allow for an interview and inevitable follow up questions, and it would not assure that we would be receiving full information from the witnesses. We therefore declined to proceed in this manner. We further discuss the details regarding this matter in Section III below.
However, we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated the contract proposals and awarded Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured regarding their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House. We interviewed the personnel involved in the factor evaluation and source selection processes, including factor and selection board chairs, the Source Selection Authority, and the Procuring Contracting Officer. Most of their identities and involvement in the procurement award were unknown to White House staff and even to the senior DoD officials. None of these witnesses told us they felt any outside influence or pressure for or against a particular competitor as they made their decisions on the award of the contract. These witnesses also told us that public statements from the President and “media swirl” about the contract did not directly or indirectly influence the integrity of the procurement process or the outcome of the JEDI Cloud source selection.
Yet, these media reports, and the reports of President Trump’s statements about Amazon, ongoing bid protests and “lobbying” by JEDI Cloud competitors, as well as inaccurate media reports about the JEDI Cloud procurement process, may have created the appearance or perception that the contract award process was not fair or unbiased."
[1] https://media.defense.gov/2020/Apr/15/2002281438/-1/-1/1/REP...
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.
What? #2 is a process, not a point event.
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
Comparatively the A330 MRRT, which the first round winning bid was based on entered service June 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
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.
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-...
Maybe you should expand your search terms, or, you know, RTFA.
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-tru...
[2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/06/w...
[3]https://www.wsj.com/articles/snag-in-media-merger-stirs-tens...
That's like saying pleading the 5th is a confession...
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.
Perhaps true, and relevant how, when talking about American companies bidding for work for the American govt?
But when the head of government intervenes in the process for no clear reasons and then refuses to explain what that intervention was or why it happened or allow anyone else to comment; and when this is defended as remaining silent because speaking "may tend to incriminate" ala the 5th amendment, then it is clear there was grossly inappropriate intervention.
The issue is not whether Amazon or Microsoft win the contract. The issue is whether contract awards are going to be used to force companies to support and obey the party in power. That and the causally related "it can't happen here" mind set.
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
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
I'm not sure how you would best adjust this system for non-identical goods.
One rule for the rulers and another for the ruled.
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.
And how many companies don't use Office at all?
- In house is the way to go!
- No the pervious administration was wrong - outsourcing is the way to go
Lather, rinse, repeat
You would think there is a loophole for classified documents, but it is not mentioned there. They may be a perverse incentive to contract out so it can be secret-ish.
The best example I can think of is Ghidra from the NSA, which was formally classified. See https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/blob/master..., parts of it are not the work of the government and not public domain.
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-quit...
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.
Bezos is a Democrat and owner of the Washington Post, a paper which has been openly critical of Trump's administration.
Instead, they made a contract that is too big to lose.
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.
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.