Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

blogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 156 posts

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#21

Post by partiallypro »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #13

> there is a very specific issue before the court at the moment. It may seem arcane and procedural, but the back-and-forth arguments between Amazon and the government raise a key question of principle and fairness that should matter to us all. Namely, should a company—like Amazon—that bid high and lost, now get a do-over, especially now—as the IG’s report makes clear—Amazon received additional proprietary information…

Isn't the point though that Amazon knew about Microsoft's bid and other proprietary elements and STILL bid high (while Microsoft was blind to Amazon's?) They already had the advantage of information. #2 has already effectively happened.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#22

Post by kapilvt »

ross2990 wrote: post #11
gaukes wrote: post #4

> Even if you believe that Amazon may have started as the front runner, it’s clear our team worked hard to catch up and surpass them by investing in our technology and listening to the DoD. Is MSFT actually ahead?

Maybe not on the raw technology for edge cases, but in terms of actually supporting DoD business needs it is for sure. I have worked for two branches in the past 4 years assisting in migration to Office365 and certain legacy database systems into Azure. The vast majority of legacy IT in the DoD essentially supports AD/Office/Exchange which is far easier to migrate.

so identity federation isn't a thing? and is cloud the same as office ? because the former is all about supporting separation on the latter.

disclaimer: former aws, and always oss, and actually used aws/azure/gcp in anger

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#23

Post by roel_v »

partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

Having been on the winning side of a contract once for a bid that was clearly 100% written by a competitor, the Big Dog in our industry, in such a way that they absolutely thought only they could ever be meeting the terms - and then winning that bid by offering a better product at a lower price, and faster, I can a little bit imagine how satisfying this win must have been for the Microsoft bid manager or whatever they'd be called. And my project was only 6 digits.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#24

Post by sailfast »

ross2990 wrote: post #17
partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

When JEDI was first proposed, AWS had already been the vast majority of cloud services for the Intelligence community. This led to them having a distinct advantage because they already had the certified infrastructure to handle US Secret and Top Secret information. This was (in my own thoughts) why that immediate capability was stressed so much in the initial request for proposal.

First off - I don't know that it's normal for a competing company in a protest to post a press release like this. I know things have gotten nuts recently and people protest for giggles these days, but this seems... weird.

I also wonder to a certain extent why additional ceiling was not added under the current vehicle to do this if AWS was the preferred solution. MOUs signed, dollars routed, etc seems to be the easiest route rather than a massive procurement for something like this. It doesn't make any sense unless they're awarding an entirely new data center.

It also sounds like there's a disagreement about a core requirement / availability definitions which significantly impact storage costs, which obviously would change one's bid? https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480585/AWS-hits-out-a...

DoD IG Report on the process: https://www.scribd.com/document/456555063/Report-on-the-Join...

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#25

Post by caseysoftware »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... > The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.

A quote past the first paragraph of the story:

> the IG said "we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated proposals and made the source-selection awarding Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured about their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House."

As with most articles, the juicy, salacious lines are at the beginning but the real details are 10 paragraphs in.

Based on the following paragraphs, the IG did find evidence of ethical misconduct by Amazon as they hired the DOD guy who helped form the JEDI program.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#26

Post by ceejayoz »

caseysoftware wrote: post #25
ceejayoz wrote: post #7

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/pentagon-amazon-tru... > The Pentagon’s inspector general “could not definitively determine” whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract because senior Defense Department officials were barred from answering questions on the subject during interviews, according to a 313-page report released on Wednesday.

A quote past the first paragraph of the story: > the IG said "we believe the evidence we received showed that the DoD personnel who evaluated proposals and made the source-selection awarding Microsoft the JEDI Cloud contract were not pressured about their decision on the award of the contract by any DoD leaders more senior to them, who may have communicated with the White House." As with most articles, the juicy, sal…

"The evidence we received" is fairly meaningless when coupled with "we weren't allowed to obtain the evidence we wanted".

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#27

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

sterlind wrote: post #12
partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

I work for MS but don't know anything about the bidding process. I was a little surprised we won, but now it makes sense. I feel like even if they can't get the DoD to let them re-bid now that they have proprietary information on us and our bid, they'll tie us up in court as long as they can to keep us from successfully delivering. They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and k…

> They want to maintain the head start they made with GovCloud as long as possible and keep other companies out. Icky.

I'm not picking on you as an individual, but there's great justice in Microsoft suffering this.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#28

Post by pnw_hazor »

steve19 wrote: post #15

This misses the point. All large DoD contract are usually followed by a lawsuit from the loser. I have seen this happens so many times. If MSFT lost, they would have probably sued.

Yes, it is normal. Even small government RFP contracts often have do-overs when losers challenge the results.

I remember when Boeing first was awarded the US Air Force tanker contract. It was soon rescinded for, among other things, fraud. They won the project again the second time around.

Recently, the US Air Force has refused delivery of the tankers because of manufacturing flaws.

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

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#29

Post by caseysoftware »

partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

More precisely, it looks like Amazon hired the DOD guy who helped write the scope. Being involved in those pre-RFP discussions, understanding the reasoning, and secondary undocumented concerns would be immensely valuable.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#30

Post by partiallypro »

ross2990 wrote: post #17
partiallypro wrote: post #2

My take on this whole thing, is the Amazon basically wrote the entire scope...so they just thought they were going to win because only they would meet it (this was a bit of a scandal just a few months back.) They bid high, and then they lost. Now they are mad that their lobbying wasn't a 100% success, so they are suing. It's all so very Amazon.

When JEDI was first proposed, AWS had already been the vast majority of cloud services for the Intelligence community. This led to them having a distinct advantage because they already had the certified infrastructure to handle US Secret and Top Secret information. This was (in my own thoughts) why that immediate capability was stressed so much in the initial request for proposal.

More likely the Amazon lobbied hard to make requirements a barrier to entry:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/24/pentagon-...

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/03/amazon-defense-departmen...

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/252467312/D...

Post reply on HN