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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#41

Post by hannibalhorn »

Eclyps wrote: post #20

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

$1B/year is quite a bit, would have been 4% of AWS's business. I suspect it will positively impact Azure more but havn't paid much attention to their numbers.

Not that it's relevant, but I actually signed up with Azure a couple months ago just to build an open source project on a cloud copy of Windows 10 with Visual Studio. I still ran into a bunch of problems with licensing type stuff, and wound up getting calls & e-mails from a sales rep. I'm glad there's some decent competition, but definitely prefer Amazon.

Edit: Corrected percentage, thanks to statguy.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#42

Post by zucker42 »

Zaheer wrote: post #19

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#44

Post by hackingthenews »

tozeur wrote: post #24
foob4r wrote: post #5

I wonder how azure employees feel about this.

I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?

What about the fact that privacy is becoming a thing of the past?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#45

Post by vkou »

tozeur wrote: post #24
foob4r wrote: post #5

I wonder how azure employees feel about this.

I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?

I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes.

If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures.

Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same time, insisting on spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#46

Post by xref »

Wow what a course change. For the last couple years there have been articles on HN about how the JEDI requirements were written to specifically exclude Microsoft/ibm/gcp because the DoD preferred AWS so its selection was a forgone conclusion. Also coverage of the resulting lawsuits by those companies over the very aws-tailored “requirements”

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#47

Post by pinewurst »

hackingthenews wrote: post #44
tozeur wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?

What about the fact that privacy is becoming a thing of the past?

I fear Google and Facebook far more than the US Army. I fail to see how rehosting ancient military logistics and business systems translates to a Lojack up our collective derrieres.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#48

Post by z3t4 »

What do the military need 10 billion US dollars in cloud computing for ? Are they going to fork Bitcoin? DDOS attack? If they are for example going to archive video footage, it's probably much cheaper to print it to film.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#49

Post by statguy »

hannibalhorn wrote: post #41
Eclyps wrote: post #20

There’s not much to the article right now (developing story), but how big of a blow is this to Amazon? And how big of a boon to Microsoft? I realize that this is likely because of the people that I surround myself with, but I don’t know anybody who actually uses Azure. Is Azure’s core business large corporations/government?

$1B/year is quite a bit, would have been 4% of AWS's business. I suspect it will positively impact Azure more but havn't paid much attention to their numbers. Not that it's relevant, but I actually signed up with Azure a couple months ago just to build an open source project on a cloud copy of Windows 10 with Visual Studio. I still ran into a bunch of problems with licensing type stuff, and wound up getting calls & e…

AWS revenue in Q3 2019 was $9B, so it would be about 4% of AWS's business in terms of revenue.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#50

Post by Darkphibre »

zucker42 wrote: post #42
Zaheer wrote: post #19

Original post from U.S. DoD: https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/... There's several other contracts mentioned in the post. It's a good reminder of how much money goes into the military–industrial complex. The JEDI contract was by far the largest contract awarded in this round. The rest of contracts total roughly 1.5 billion dollars.

From the link, could anyone explain why there is a $148 million dollar contract for F35 testing expected to be completed in 2032? Why would it take 12 years to perform testing?

Maybe it's for anticipated platform changes as the landscape of the battlefield changes?
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