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Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

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Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#51

Post by guiomie »

ryandrake wrote: post #41
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #14

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirement…

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

That is right. Not sure if it's called corruption tho. No one is getting paid on the side.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#52

Post by nmeofthestate »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #14

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirement…

This looks like a regurgitation of a Vanity Fair article that I found a bit flimsy.

The idea for example that MS are effectively excluded from bidding because they can't achieve the feat of putting 32GB of memory in a server is a bit absurd when you think about it. For a big contract like this I reckon MS techs could probably just about manage it.

Have the people drafting the requirements done a bit of copy-n-pasting? Definitely.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#53

Post by scrumper »

pc86 wrote: post #43
ryandrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

The folks downvoting you have obviously never been in the rooms when RFPs are drafted. I've been in the room half a dozen times and in almost every case the RFP is written so one particular firm will win the bid, and at most 1-2 other firms are even qualified to respond. Edit: Once while sitting on the private sector side of the table (yes RFPs were often drafted in consultation with the company that would eventually…

This applies just as much to private sector RFPs too. If you're a vendor and you get an RFP out of the blue, you're not going to win it.

RFI process is usually far more open.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#54

Post by devonkim »

ryandrake wrote: post #46
pc86 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks downvoting you have obviously never been in the rooms when RFPs are drafted. I've been in the room half a dozen times and in almost every case the RFP is written so one particular firm will win the bid, and at most 1-2 other firms are even qualified to respond. Edit: Once while sitting on the private sector side of the table (yes RFPs were often drafted in consultation with the company that would eventually…

I’ve always recommended that software folks do a short tour of duty at a government contractor, purely for perspective. Its amazing to just watch how that sausage is made and why it’s made. You’ll come away with a renewed appreciation for working in the private sector on products that are made for people .

Having worked in the sector in the past, I can’t imagine anything I’ve gained for my time in there besides bitterness and cynicism for business, and this attitude has had only negative impact upon my career. On the other hand, I see a lot of parallels with the private sector, specifically in enterprise software. B2C software has its own awfulness but at least it’s a bit sexier than the insane Rube Goldberg Machine of, say, Payroll software. These days, I don’t really see a difference between an IBM, HP and Lockheed, Northrop - they oftentimes compete for the same contracts even.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#55

Post by bobmarley1 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

It's Oracle. Safra is super close to the administration [1]. The only reason this contract is out of the hands of Booz Allen et al is Oracle. This might be the worst-kept tech secret in D.C. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-12/trump-tea...

What are you insinuating? Booz Allen isn't even a cloud provider at all. They will likely inevitably be involved in the rollout regardless of who the gov goes with, AWS, GCP, Azure etc. but I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm also genuinely confused by Oracle being pulled into this, are their execs really so deluded that they think they could actually win this contract or is this just a wild guess?

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#56

Post by bhouston »

ryandrake wrote: post #41
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #14

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirement…

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

This is very very common and happens in every big company and in every government around the world, even so call "not corrupt" countries. For big contracts and for small contracts.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#57

Post by bhouston »

joncrane wrote: post #48
ryandrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

It's not even necessarily corruption. The company they're wiring the bid for may indeed be the best option, they are just trying to minimize inefficiency. Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

> Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

The line between cronymism and efficiency is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#58

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #41
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #14

Well... To be fair, it's an AWS spec sheet reworded as an RFP. Other cloud providers - even Google and Microsoft - can't meet the requirements, because they don't have the same marketing jargon. For example, there's a requirement in the RFP for a "ruggedized" storage product. That's a made up word that Amazon uses to describe AWS Snowball, so no other company satisfies the requirement. Some other AWS-only requirement…

Isn’t this commonplace in government contracting? You have a preferred vendor already, but must show the appearance of an open, fair bid, so you put your RFP out there—but is made as specific as possible, matching your preferred vendor’s product spec word-for-word, so only they can meet the requirements. This is kind of standard, run of the mill corruption that I thought was well known.

[deleted]

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#59

Post by krylon »

cmiles74 wrote: post #20
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

It's Oracle. Safra is super close to the administration [1]. The only reason this contract is out of the hands of Booz Allen et al is Oracle. This might be the worst-kept tech secret in D.C. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-12/trump-tea...

There was an article in The Register a couple weeks ago about a pension fund suing Oracle over their excessive cloud hype, and what sounds like outright threats to punish customers who don't try it out. From the piece: The complaint alleged Oracle has been coercing customers to adopt its cloud services, to inflate revenue and hide market disinterest. "In truth, Oracle drove sales of cloud products using threats and e…

I read something similar on a German IT news site a while back. It claimed that Oracle's sales people pressured customers into buying cloud services, and if the customers did not "comply", they were threatened with a license audit that apparently included suspending the customers' licenses until the audit was completed. And if your ERP system is supplied by Oracle, or the database your ERP system runs on (or your financial accounting package), that means you can basically shut down your company until the audit is complete.

Re: Someone Is Waging a Secret War to Undermine the Pentagon’s Huge Cloud Contract

#60

Post by wonthegame »

bhouston wrote: post #57
joncrane wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even necessarily corruption. The company they're wiring the bid for may indeed be the best option, they are just trying to minimize inefficiency. Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism.

> Having said that, just as often, it's due to cronyism. The line between cronymism and efficiency is in the eye of the beholder.

Some corporations are more equal than others.
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