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

defenseone.com

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

#61

Post by dkhenry »

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…

the concerns you raise are so arbitrary and copied word for word from the vanity fair article that was published a few days ago. FWIW Google, and Microsoft have datacenters well more then 150 miles apart. Also ruggedized is a term used all over the place in military spec's I mean its has its own wikipedia entry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugged_computer

This is the kind of astroturfing that should get your account flagged.

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

#62

Post by zero_intp »

scrumper wrote: post #53
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…

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.

My first job in the '80s was doing RFI/RFP shotgunning for a mom & pop (my mom & pop) defense consulting firm out of the GSA register. We would essentially cold-respond to everything in our domain. From that experience I learned that there were some genuine requests with no fix in.

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

#63

Post by beaconstudios »

guiomie wrote: post #51
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.

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

at best it's subversion of a policy that is intended to enforce some amount of competition.

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

#64

Post by TheBill »

koboll wrote: post #19
nbevans wrote: post #8

Looking at Oracle's website, after getting past the hilarious Cookies Policy modal prompt, you really wouldn't think they were genuinely in the cloud business. It just looks like sales fodder with no substance behind it.

They aren't "genuinely in the cloud business". They are a vampiric ancient giant slug that lumbers on by drinking the blood of other ancient giant slugs. They have zero interest in marketing cloud infrastructure to, say, startups.

https://goo.gl/MZFbQ9

Manager, Startup Ecosystem Business Development, Oracle San Fransisco

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

#65

Post by Murdodc089 »

krylon wrote: post #59
cmiles74 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

That's when you go along with their demands for just as long as it takes to get completely off their products/systems all together.

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

#66

Post by joeax »

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…

> Not to mention the idiotic idea of a single provider solution.

I'm surprised this isn't being discussed more. With a huge $10bil cloud I would think you would want to select a secondary vendor to distribute redundant workloads and data storage. Even if Azure or GCP couldn't meet some requirements today it's a ten-year project and both are expanding quickly. Azure has recently brought online government-specific locations and Google has already has geographically dispersed zones within regions that meet these requirements.

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

#67

Post by thaumasiotes »

guiomie wrote: post #51
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.

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

The practice is called "single-sourcing".

It's pretty clearly an example of corruption; the entire purpose of single-sourcing a contract is to defeat the RFP, or bidding-out, process. A decision is being made by someone who isn't supposed to have the authority to make it.

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

#68

Post by sangnoir »

Murdodc089 wrote: post #65
krylon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

That's when you go along with their demands for just as long as it takes to get completely off their products/systems all together.

...and the Oracle sales folk won't care - as long as they meet their (current) targets. Be very careful about the behaviors you incentivize.

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

#69

Post by Finnucane »

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...

I can't believe Oracle would do something so underhanded and unethical. Oh, wait. Yes, I can believe that.

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

#70

Post by danjoc »

Why would the Defense Dept. choose Google or Microsoft cloud? I wouldn't put US military cloud on GCP or Azure after the Project Maven and ICE thing. Even if they were cheaper. Those companies are full of people who have demonstrated willingness to sabotage America's defenses. Their names are on anti-America petitions around the internet.

Amazon has proven willingness to assist military and law enforcement using cloud facial recognition technologies in the face of criticism from detractors. Of course AWS will win.

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