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It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

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Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#71

Post by lmm »

bilbo0s wrote: post #13
oliverx0 wrote: post #11

Seems a bit too tailored though - "To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers, a prerequisite that only Amazon can currently meet. JEDI also asks for “32 GB of RAM”—the precise specification of Amazon’s services. (Microsoft, by contrast, offers only 28 GB, and Google provides 30 GB.) In places, JEDI echoes Amazon’s own language: It calls for a “ruggedized” s…

Guys, please, try to be reasonable here. 150 miles is not an insert for Amazon. I'm not a general, but even I can see that 150 miles is military sense.

150 specifically just happens to be the military requirement? Not 100 or 200, but 150, which just happens to be the distance that Amazon offers?

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#72

Post by culturestate »

jstanley wrote: post #68
danpalmer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G-cloud is a pretty broad scheme that covers all sorts of computing services and consulting at all levels of secrecy. It's a marketplace with many different uses. If you do a search with, for example, a minimum provider staff security clearance of DV (which is pretty high, would apply to many matters of national security), all the major cloud providers disappear from the results, and you get smaller companies based i…

Is the interface for such a search publicly accessible?

This[1] is the first Google result for "g cloud provider search" - I believe it's what GP is referencing.

1. https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/buyers/direct-...

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#73

Post by raverbashing »

jchw wrote: post #38
oliverx0 wrote: post #11

Seems a bit too tailored though - "To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers, a prerequisite that only Amazon can currently meet. JEDI also asks for “32 GB of RAM”—the precise specification of Amazon’s services. (Microsoft, by contrast, offers only 28 GB, and Google provides 30 GB.) In places, JEDI echoes Amazon’s own language: It calls for a “ruggedized” s…

"JEDI also asks for “32 GB of RAM”—the precise specification of Amazon’s services. (Microsoft, by contrast, offers only 28 GB, and Google provides 30 GB.)" What? Microsoft only provides 28 GB of RAM, and Google only 30 GB? I'm pretty sure neither Azure nor GCP even launched with limits that strict.

Well they probably have an upper tier. If it costs the same it's to be seen.

But yeah, if Google or Microsoft engineers can't create a custom instance with 32GB of memory then they shouldn't get the bid

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#74

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bilbo0s wrote: post #13
oliverx0 wrote: post #11

Seems a bit too tailored though - "To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers, a prerequisite that only Amazon can currently meet. JEDI also asks for “32 GB of RAM”—the precise specification of Amazon’s services. (Microsoft, by contrast, offers only 28 GB, and Google provides 30 GB.) In places, JEDI echoes Amazon’s own language: It calls for a “ruggedized” s…

Guys, please, try to be reasonable here. 150 miles is not an insert for Amazon. I'm not a general, but even I can see that 150 miles is military sense.

I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of the requirements used Amazon's numbers and marketing material as, shall we say, inspiration.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#75

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bilbo0s wrote: post #10
fipple wrote: post #6

A $2 billion minimum size for a vendor getting a $10 billion contract is perfectly reasonable.

More than reasonable. Not awarding the contract to an organization with the requisite scale would be cause for investigating the process. In my mind, the likelihood is that people would complain no matter who got this contract. If it went to Microsoft, the article would be about all the high ranking contacts between Microsoft and the Pentagon. As a pragmatic matter, any organization with the expertise and scale to re…

Yup, and same with Google, with the extra spookiness that has been surrounding Google for a while. And Facebook, but then there'd be a riot.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#76

Post by youdontknowtho »

Everyone seems focused on the numbers 32GB or 150 miles...Amazon has moved into lobbying in a big way. That is the actual story. Bigger than major investment banks. Bezos owns the only paper in Washington that actually does journalism. People involved with Amazon and the head of the DOD have been instrumental in crafting the proposal for JEDI.

Just because you learned AWS and it's been good for your resume doesn't mean that they aren't being underhanded in D.C.

If you are going to be a fan boy about it, then you should be excited that they seem to be outmaneuvering established players in the federal sector. That's what's happening.

This isn't "they built a better mousetrap", this is "they hired all the people that are ever asked about mousetraps, and they changed the language that you have to use to ask for a mousetrap, and they took over one of the better outlets that runs stories about fraud in the mousetrap business. Oh and their commodity mousetrap business is one of three equally good ones."

I know that you think AWS is WAY better and that it makes a difference. It doesn't. Azure and GCP are just as good for most of the things that people are building these days. Sure there are differences, but it's a commodity market.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#77

Post by youdontknowtho »

nova22033 wrote: post #7

This is a bad article. Is there any other cloud provider who has a cloud offering certified to hold top secret/secret data?

This is a bad article. I'm a fan and I don't like my favorite defense contractor maligned? Get a grip.

This is Amazon trying to engineer a permanent piece of the public largess for themselves. That's all. They aren't better at this than anyone else. For that matter, the same could be said for all the other top tech companies. I'm just tired of AWS fans saying that it's strictly merit based. That's not how anything works in big business. It's naïve and childish.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#78

Post by deadbunny »

partiallypro wrote: post #50
Spivak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because government contracts of this size play by different rules. They're not using Amazon as a customer like normal companies -- they're hiring Amazon the firm to build something specific for them.

A government contract where the sole company that can ever win the contract also says that fail overs to other providers is bad. So if Amazon goes down, the DoD is shit out of luck. I don't see how that's not a national security problem. Not only that, but after the $10 Billion is expended the DoD is vendor locked. How people don't see this as a major problem/cronyism is baffling. The vendor lock itself is bad enough…

Hows it any different from every other single provider contract ever? Everything's in an IBM DC (or three), they fuck something up? It's down.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#79

Post by deadbunny »

amaccuish wrote: post #48

More concerning is the fact that the UK government is happy to store UK data in the US with AWS under its "G-cloud" scheme. At least the US guys have picked a "local" vendor.

Having worked in multiple gov department I can assure you different types of data have different types of restriction on where they are stored.

Re: It’s Amazon’s Swamp Now

#80

Post by robbiemitchell »

partiallypro wrote: post #43

Why would such a massively important backbone of US defense want to rely on only a single provider? It should be using all 3 of the major players (or others) and even some on premise stuff. This seems like a nightmare waiting to happen, and crony capitalism at its finest. The fact that Amazon says in the article that using fail overs to other providers is some hassle...is just amazing.

This was addressed a bit in a separate article recently: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/capitalbusin...

The DoD intends to use multiple cloud providers overall, across multiple projects —- but not within this single contract.

The CIA already has a $600M contract with AWS.

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