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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#231

Post by topkai22 »

Bajeezus wrote: post #133
topkai22 wrote: post #115

Great news for Microsoft, but I hope they don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog. There is a reason that you don’t see many companies straddling the defense/civilian divide that much- the military’s crazy bureaucracy, Legal, contracting, and certification environment means that organizations that work with them often end changing their culture to suit the government, and those cultural changes make them less comp…

Microsoft has had a variety of government contracts, and even government clouds, for a long time. Not sure this will create much of a difference in culture.

It's a matter of type and scale. If an org is selling commodity products to DoD as like 5% of annual revenue, it's very different than 30% as part of suite including services.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#232

Post by reallydude »

munchbunny wrote: post #228
Supermancho wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech I don't trust or rely on any infrastructure that largely uses microsoft products...I'm sure there's some minor stuff hidden away here and there within systems. MSFT has a software philosophy, which is reciprocated in their culture, that can only be described as byzantine and unpredictable. They are basically 00's Oracle a…

Wait 'til you hear about all of those people who use Excel. Azure, sure, but Windows and Office are at this point very mature products. They're not going to win awards, but they get the job done.

How is that relevant to the topic or infrastructure comment?

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#233

Post by DKnoll »

dmak wrote: post #227
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a request: if you intend to directly refute another's comment by posting sources, posting a 238 page document without a specific page reference isn't really helpful.

It's called burying the opponent in papers. I watch Suits, so I know how this works.

I wouldn't call sending truckloads of boxes of paperwork during discovery to opposing counsel and linking a 238-page PDF with a good ToC and summary equivalent, but I guess the internet has robbed a lot of people of basic research skills.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#234

Post by reilly3000 »

whb07 wrote: post #12

“Dear MSFT, enjoy the gift xoxo, Oracle”

I'm sure they are a problem child, but can Oracle really afford to lose more big customers? I feel like they are pretty universally reviled, but I am inside the HN bubble. They have done nothing to woo developers and everything to exploit IT management and public budgets AFAIK.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#235

Post by H8crilA »

Elof wrote: post #216
H8crilA wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large groups of people are so embarrassingly bad at predicting the future. They are pretty good at creating the future, though. As in - separating the power grid is a step towards separating other things and finally "separating the country". Classic Soros' reflexivity.

Isn’t the future inevitably created

It is, of course. But I'm talking about this, specifically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

Which can be summed up as "if you think this hard enough it may just come true".

Soros developed this idea after studying under Popper and put it to test in his ridiculously successful hedge fund manager career.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#236

Post by solidasparagus »

Retric wrote: post #214
solidasparagus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your 1/2 number is correct (I'm doubtful), an $18B annual revenue company growing at 59% (+$10.6B) is not growing faster than a $36B annual revenue company growing at 35% (+$12.6B)

Company growth is almost always compared on a percentage basis as individuals don’t own the entire company making that number meaningless to them. What they care about is if they own X$ in some stock today what’s it going to be worth at some point in the future.

I think that's a self-centered PoV (not meant as a criticism) which focuses on the wrong things when trying to understand the state of the cloud market.

What really matters long-term is who is acquiring the new-to-public-cloud customers as they move away from on-prem and who is attracting the new high-value workloads (AI). These are not growth of existing customer base which is why I think raw numbers are more useful in understanding the state of cloud market as we come to the end of the beginning of the public cloud era.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#237

Post by fouc »

mbreese wrote: post #188
philsnow wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This show felt like so many other shows on American TV in the last decade: somebody had the core of a good idea, but the writers had no idea how to turn that into a show. The first couple episodes of Jericho were tantalizing. The interesting part was the world and the geopolitical situation, but then so little about that actually changed over the course of the following episodes, it was just a bunch of small town pol…

> I'll catch hell for this, but Battlestar Galactica was the same way. I just rewatched the mini-series and first few episodes of Season 1 of BSG. While, I remember thinking the same thing at the time, it was very obvious the second time around that for large arcs, the writers didn't have much of a plan. If I remember correctly though, there was always a lot of uncertainty about how many seasons they show would have,…

I'm surprised Farscape would've been expensive. I originally didn't watch that series because the production values didn't look much better than Andromeda (which I didn't like). Course Farscape ended up being one of my most favorite shows.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#238

Post by simonebrunozzi »

rshnotsecure wrote: post #26

Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has done a significant amount of work for the NSA. AWS has had GovCloud, and it is true the CIA uses AWS, but MSFT has built out quite well some of the more exotic requests of the NSA. The crown jewel of the NSA’s MSFT partnership is the San Antonio, Texas data center. The “5150 Rogers Road” data center was chosen because Texas has cheap electricity, which is an enormous cost outlay f…

You sound like a smart guy, but most of your considerations are not as important as you think they are.

1) The San Antonio data center: yes, it's a big and shiny one, but you don't pick MSFT vs AWS because of a shiny data center. AWS has amazing DCs across the US, and if you talk to people in the industry, AWS and Google have the most advanced DC technology out there, with Microsoft lagging a bit (but not too far off).

2) San Antonio has 4 military bases: not much to do with picking MSFT, again. The only argument for "human proximity" is Langley Virginia, and it is still a weak one. You don't need physical proximity, actually you try to avoid it (in case of an attack, you don't want to wipe out both the DC and the smart security people using it for the government).

3) Texas has a separate electrical grid: true, but most modern data centers NEED to have built-in redundancy in relation to: power grid, flood plains, supply routes, etc. Which means this is not really a big advantage anymore.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#239

Post by Sanzig »

meddlepal wrote: post #51
gtirloni wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Texas has a separate electrical grid from the rest of the US. This is interesting. The Wikipedia article has this gem: "The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country. Don't get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I've met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.

It's still a bit weird to have a separate interconnection. Even if Texas was an independent nation, it wouldn't necessarily harm anything to be synchronized with another interconnection. The western and eastern interconnections already straddle international borders.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#240

Post by js2 »

azinman2 wrote: post #118
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One if my favorite season finales ever: https://youtu.be/xFgNZG3gmqc The people with this view are also a big and growing minority: https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/blog/texan-first-american-s... > Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 40 percent identify as Texans before they identify as Americans, far outpacing any other age group.

I feel the same way about CA. I suspect this isn’t that uncommon — many people put family first, then community, then country.

The Economist had an edition this summer on TX and CA:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/20/texafornia-drea...

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/californ...

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