
Amazon asks court to halt Microsoft's work on Pentagon 'war cloud' - dbg31415
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/479530-amazon-asks-court-to-halt-microsofts-work-on-pentagon-war-cloud
======
siffland
After 15 years of being a DoD contractor, it is frustrating to see yet another
sole source entity getting the contract. Prices will inflate and there is no
competition.

HP and Oracle have been reaping the benefits of this for at least two decades
now. We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB
since DoD prefers Oracle. We would buy useless HP software because we were a
HP shop. I fought to get a non HP solid state array for our data, it was an
epic battle (in the end I won, on the extreme we had 6 to 7 hour processes cut
down to under an hour, the HP equivalent could not replicate that at the
time).

So i can see DoD moving to Azure and then get the vendor lock in and in 10
years if they want to move the cost will be so extreme it will either cause
taxpayers a ton of money or not be realistic.

As impossible as it sounds, and somewhat impractical, i would rather see a
vendor agnostic approach and DoD spread across multiple gov clouds. i guess
years has gotten me jaded with government spending (wait, what, how did we buy
2 extra $50k Cisco chassis and then keep them in storage for 3 years....).

~~~
derefr
> We put databases on Oracle that should be handled by Postgres or MariaDB
> since DoD prefers Oracle.

I mean, if you’ve already budgeted the CapEx for some additional Oracle
licenses, the OpEx efficiencies of having unified tooling and a unified ops
doctrine are no joke.

I haven’t worked with an Oracle DBMS, but I _think_ this is analogous: I’d
sure hate to have to manage a cloud infrastructure where parts were on AWS,
parts on GCP, and parts on Azure. Sure, there are generic tools that treat all
three the same, or over-layers like K8s that don’t care about substrate—but
what if the projects on each platform were taking advantage of that platform’s
specialties? What if I was using SNS on AWS, or BigQuery on GCP?

To bring that back through the analogy, what if our Oracle projects were tuned
using Oracle-specific query-planner hints, while our Postgres projects did
their ETL using PG-specific Foreign Data Wrapper connectors?

In both cases, the only real solution is hiring and retaining O(N) specialized
ops headcount, one team for each stack. And that cost gets a lot higher than
just paying for another darn Oracle license.

~~~
vasco
Even with an abstraction layer like kubernetes you still have a lot of
duplicate work if you're multi-cloud. Services need to be exposed with load
balancers, and those will have different configurations to be setup. Same with
any Volumes. And then you have platform updates on both sides, bugs, quirks.
plus the maintenance and upkeep of two clouds - two bills to inspect, two
account managers to deal with, two sets of permissions and overall account
configuration to setup, maintain and audit. Multi-cloud is really a set of
requirements that changes the whole game in terms of operational overhead. And
we limited our example to kubernetes. I imagine any non-fictional-for-the-
sake-of-example company would want to make use of other platform specific
tools as you mention.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I think a lot of this speculation requires inside knowledge of what the DoD's
use cases actually are.

Are they doing a lot of compute, a lot of ingestion, a lot of output, and a
ton of networking? Are they primarily just doing one of these things?

Who knows?

There's a lot of cases where having multiple clouds could be fine -- maybe
even a big benefit. There's also a lot of cases where it could be a major
headache.

~~~
Diederich
> Who knows?

I know a little about it from a previous employer.

Even the narrow slice I saw was all of "a lot of compute, a lot of ingestion,
a lot of output, and a ton of networking", and more.

I think that the internal inefficiencies in the DOD datacenters are so
enormous that any kind move to something more 'standardized', no matter what
company it is, even with all of the artificial overhead, etc, will likely be a
big win.

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

~~~
robmiller
Wouldn't surprise me. I heard the person who wrote the legislation left when
they were completed and took a job with AWS.

~~~
buckminster
The British civil servant who championed the use of AWS by the British
government took a job with AWS after the deal was done. It is shameful.

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

~~~
robbyt
Sure, but in this case, the choice of Azure over AWS was due to government
corruption, rather than actual technical diligence.

~~~
outside1234
That's not substantiated. There are a lot of reasons that Azure could have won
this project, highlighted by the fact that they have decades long
relationships in terms of executing on government contracts.

~~~
bduerst
The claim is not substantiated _publicly_ because Amazon's filing is currently
under seal. Of course, there are many other possible reasons but those are not
substantiated either.

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

~~~
godelzilla
Millions of people might not have died unnecessarily. The horror!

~~~
tatersolid
Actually, millions of people _would_ have died unnecessarily. Japan wouldn’t
surrender, and was planning to slowly sacrifice its _entire population_ to
bleed the allied invasion of the home islands.

Somehow people forget Japan _started_ the war in the Pacific and murdered tens
of millions of Chinese, Koreans, and other Asian civilians in the process.

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

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reallydontask
This reminds me of a time where the Department of Work and Pensions botched a
bid for a Universal Jobmatch system and ended up awarding the contract, to
methods consulting, re-tendering the contract and paying close to £1m to
methods consulting

I would not be surprised if something similar happened here, although the
payout would likely be far higher and I'm in no way comparing Methods
Consulting to Microsoft.

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

~~~
snowwrestler
The federal government cannot compete with private industry salaries and
benefits for rare technical talent because of caps on federal salaries.
Federal salaries are capped because attacking "government waste" and "lazy
overpaid government workers" is popular with politicians and the electorate.

So instead the government outsources technical projects to private
contractors... which means ultimately the government _is_ paying those big
salaries, _and_ the profit margin on top of them.

One of many many "penny wise / pound foolish" problems with the way we do
government services.

~~~
scottlocklin
Yeah I'm aware of how this goes down: in addition to what you say, government
management types get their beds feathered by working for the for-profit
companies they contract the work to after they "retire" (aka everyone involved
in F35 procurement ends up working at Lockheed; total coincidence I am sure).
Yet, somehow the NSA manages to run their own data centers[1]. It even looks
kind of cost effective!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center)

~~~
rtkwe
Part of that may have been the times. That project started construction back
in 2011 which means it was in planning for a while before that. The cloud vs
on-premises debate was at a different state back then iirc.

Also it's for NSA's questionably legal spying on US citizens vs the more
standard legality of DoD's work.

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

~~~
jaywalk
[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-
infrastructure/gove...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-
infrastructure/government/)

------
kerng
Amazon's reaction seems quite defensive, and constantly keeps reminding us how
Microsoft is seen as the better overall provider to be trusted in this case.
Tech wise they are both capable, no doubt.

I think Amazon should have just acknowledged it, congratulate Microsoft and
move on - plenty of other growth ahead in cloud computing. That's what Satya
Nadella would have done.

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

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nova22033
Is there an objective case for why Azure is better than AWS?

~~~
bob1029
If you are a purely-Microsoft shop (AD/Exchange/Visual Studio), using Azure
could give you better integration within their ecosystem (i.e. native Azure
tooling within Visual Studio). I realize AWS has similar tools and plugins,
but there is something nice to having first-party support down the entire
vertical. Making your Microsoft account rep responsible for everything really
does help to consolidate business administration concerns.

If you are not a Microsoft shop (i.e. >50% of your stuff runs on Linux), I
would almost say avoid Azure because of how focused it is on their stack. I
know you can run arbitrary Linux on Azure and generally get everything done,
but AWS (and all other non-Microsoft cloud vendors) always seemed more
friendly/cheaper for non-Windows/Office concerns.

So, it's not just about the cloud platforms and their respective costs per
feature consumption unit. It's also about your business and the ecosystem
required to support and operate within these cloud platforms.

~~~
rzmnzm
As Microsoft is proud to boast, the majority on instances on Azure are Linux
based.

The tooling that matters to me (az cli, terraform, vscode, kubectl et all)
runs absolutely fine on Azure. I use Linux to create and manage Linux and open
source infra on azure every day.

The majority of complaints I hear about azure tend to revolve around their
AzureRM templating, which is admittedly terrible, but irrelevant since
terraform exists (and cloudformation is not much better imo).

Also a lot of people dont/didn't like their portal. I don't frequently use the
portal, and besides have you seen the aws portal? It's woeful.

One benefit of azure is they name their products logically, like "azure
virtual machine" instead of "magic beanstalk" or w/e

~~~
huzaif
Majority of our issues with Azure revolve around some of their services, which
are still slow to evolve, due to their pre-cloud underpinnings.

An example of such service is their Azure AD B2C service, which is their
competitor to AWS cognito. We have been using it and as a baseline login
service, and it works fine. However, the service doesn't see much upgrades.
Their "user flow" templates, which control the logon process, have been in
preview for years.

Yes, Identity Server 4 exists but it would be nice to have decent competitors
to Spot Fleets, ECS, Cognito, etc.

------
foolfoolz
this kind of stuff is such an american way of doing things.

\- bid for contracts that enables government to make some real progress

\- lose

\- sue because you lost, claim winner can’t start until your suit is over

\- introduce 1-2 year delay of waiting while your complaint is processed

and people wonder why china gets things done in a quarter of the time

~~~
lagadu
Yeah, they get things done because they're a totalitarian, completely opaque
regime. I'll take western governments with all their faults and
inneficiencies, thank you.

~~~
rahuldottech
Plenty of western governments get lots done efficiently. Parent comment was
about US practices.

~~~
castlecrasher2
Did you even read the last sentence of the parent comment?

~~~
rahuldottech
Did you read the first?

~~~
castlecrasher2
I did. I mean, I /could/ focus on only one sentence of a post, argue from that
point alone, and insist the conversation hinge on that point but that would be
ignorant and rude.

------
crazygringo
_Normally_ this might seem like a case of sore loser.

But here's the thing: in government it's _very important_ that contracts are
awarded on objective merit, because otherwise there's shockingly large
opportunity for corruption and favoritism. Billions and billions of dollars of
opportunity.

And also in this case, Trump's deep antipathy towards Bezos is well-
documented, as well as his willingness to use government means for personal
ends. Trump instructing the Pentagon to drop the objectively best bid seems to
fit his established pattern of behavior.

So in this case, Amazon's suit seems to be an entirely reasonable response. If
what Amazon alleges is true and they win, it will be a victory for good
government and correct use of taxpayer dollars. Presidents aren't kings --
it's vitally important for democracy that objective procedures are followed,
and that personal grudges aren't allowed to influence multi-billion dollar
deals.

~~~
outside1234
I mean, if you piss off a customer on a personal level, it should not surprise
anyone if you lose the contract. This is reality the world wide.

~~~
crazygringo
Nope. There's this great concept called the "rule of law". Also "free speech"
which allows you to criticize the government without retaliation. These are
absolute _bedrock_ principles of liberal democracy.

I'll admit it's the reality in countries with less developed governments,
sure. But it's a reality we ought to _fight against_ for the benefit of all,
not to blindly and meekly accept. And historically, court cases are one of the
primary tools in waging this fight.

------
kick
This thread is kind of chilling, because everyone within is treating it like
it's just chat software or something.

With quotes from this thread like "in the meantime the work doesn't get done,"
and "bid for contracts that [enable] government to make some real progress,"
you'd never guess this stuff is going to be used to and to enable murder.

So many people were focusing on how Microsoft Ɛ> Linux or Open Source or
whatever (so much so that even rms went to Microsoft and complimented them)
yet completely ignore the harm they're still trying to cause.

~~~
flatline
Is all defense-related work complicit in murder?

Do we not need a military?

Nothing is perfect, but we are trapped on a planet with a bunch of violent,
highly intelligent apes. Certainly the military does things I disagree with,
and things could always be improved, but generally what is the alternative?

~~~
james-mcelwain
There's a huge, gigantic difference between not having a military at all and
spending 1 trillion a year to be an imperialist superpower. It's almost
like... there's a middle ground.

~~~
zionic
The thing is, we spend that much and we're not even _good_ imperialists. When
was the last time we annexed any territory? Declared a lesser state a
protectorate? Or established a new colony? We spend trillions/year to be the
world police so our "allies" don't have to while they mock us on twitter.

~~~
h0h0h0h0111
Annexed? In 2020, there is no need to annex a country to get everything you
want from them - on the contrary, it's an administrative nightmare to annex a
country when you can stick your military bases there, export your goods there,
and make their economy dependent on your country's and your money without it.

------
slumdev
> Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract – or JEDI

I've been living under a rock, apparently.

Is there some requirement that when a right-wing celebrity gets elected
President, they have to use Star Wars codenames?

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

~~~
jessemillar
One server is elementary, yes, but hundreds of thousands working together is
an entirely different beast. There’s nothing easy about cloud computing and
there’s a definite reason why it’s worth buying into.

~~~
bsenftner
> "There’s nothing easy about cloud computing"

There's the deceptive mantra repeated mindlessly over and over, yet again. And
there is nothing hard either. It is just complex. So everyone mindlessly pays
too much because some marketing has successfully sold them that this is "too
hard".

