Oracle Trying Hard To Make Sure Pentagon Knows Amazon Isn't the Only Cloud Around (theregister.co.uk) 72
The Pentagon is no longer taking questions on its controversial cloud contract after making last-minute amendments to the deal -- and has received another complaint from disgruntled prospective bidder Oracle. The Register adds: The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract has a massive scope, covering different levels of secrecy and classification across all branches of the US military, and a massive budget, being worth a potential $10bn for a maximum of 10 years. Unsurprisingly, it has garnered similar levels of interest and complaint. Most criticism focused on the decision to hand the deal to a single vendor amid speculation that AWS would be a shoo-in. Would-be bidder -- and longtime AWS rival -- Oracle filed an official complaint with US government at the start of the month, arguing a single vendor would lock the Department of Defense into "legacy cloud" and went against its purported commitment to innovation and competition. It has now filed a supplementary protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is not yet public but is likely to be an exchange of information and documents. The filing coincided with the Pentagon updating the terms of the JEDI deal, which it said came after engagement with industry after the previous request for proposals (RFP) was published.
Oracle has a cloud? (Score:3)
Nuf said.
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Oracle knows they've no prayer of winning the contract outright, so they hope to require a rewrite to facilitate multiple vendors. This will allow Oracle to snooker the occasional fool in DoD procurement who still thinks Oracle is the hotness.
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Oracle bought Berkeley DB and released their own NoSQL database just a few weeks ago.
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Yeah, and they give you a free $300 service credit to try it out if you want.
Of course, Google Cloud does the same thing, and their cloud hosting services are about 5 years ahead of them technology wise.
Re:Oracle has a cloud? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't underestimate Oracle. If you make in inquiry, they will immediately start trying to identify the "decision maker", bypass you, and start calling managers and executives, and working their way up the chain until they find someone they can bribe with hookers and blackjack.
It will likely work the same here. They will bypass DoD and go straight to congress, and they may not even need new hookers if they still have videotapes of the last time.
No. (Score:5, Funny)
I would consider relying on Oracle to a threat to national security. Seriously, those bastards would gladly shut down vital server in the midst of a war over licensing fees.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Glad you were modded up to +5, but I'm confused as to why people thought you were being funny. Oracle is totally unreliable and have shown themselves only too eager to screw over their customers at a moment's notice. And Darth Ellison's ego is so huge I'm sure he'd take delight 'altering the deal' with the Pentagon, then threatening to 'alter it further' if he thought he could extort more money from them.
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Agreed. Oracle is very hostile to their own clients. I don't understand why anyone chooses them.
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People CHOSE to go with them years ago and are CHOOSING to migrate away...
That's what we're doing. It will eventually cost Oracle something like $50 million per year from what I understand.
They made the mistake of lying about license costs to the wrong executive, and he is not fucking happy.
JEDI? Really (Score:2)
How long did it take them to decide on the actual name for the project after they decided its acronym would be JEDI?
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The question is whether Space Force will be using any JEDI technology.
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How long did it take them to decide on the actual name for the project after they decided its acronym would be JEDI?
If Oracle gets the contract, the acronym will be changed to SITH.
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I think you've got the letters scrambled.
Longtime rivals??? (Score:4, Informative)
No, they are not. Oracle is relatively new to cloud services. They fought it for years. AWS has been in cloud services much longer.
Re:Longtime rivals??? (Score:5, Informative)
Arguably, they aren't rivals at all. Let's not forget that at least one major investor is suing Oracle [theregister.co.uk] for allegedly falsifying demand for its cloud, including bullying customers into becoming cloud customers by threatening them with audits if they don't. Also, Oracle has been pressuring product managers into working "cloud" into their product names for years ... classic "fake it until you make it."
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Also their cloud is a piecemeal of acquisitions that require a lot of custom software development to "interoperate".
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That's a model that worked for Adobe. At least today nobody worries what programs used to be opened by Macromedia or Aldus or whoever. But you have to actually try to move them under a common model.
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Adobe are getting close to integrating all their products into their Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Launcher application, but there's still a few holdouts.
Amazon AWS has its problems, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that Oracle is warning about single vendor lock-in and "legacy" anything is so thick with irony it is nauseating.
Horrifying (Score:2)
Horrifyingly, the good option here might be Microsoft.
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In fact, they now have their own local AWS cloud.
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If the gov would use it's resources instead of hiring corporations they would save so much money it's unreal.
You seem to have missed the point of what the US military is actually for. It's not for saving money. It's for spending money. Your money.
NMCI all over again (Score:2)
1. They need to own the infrastructure.
2. They need to operate it (contract employees to start off is fine)
With NMCI, the navy was (is?) leasing monthly the cost of buying a similar work stations, had no real control over what software they could use, bandwidth was slower than ISDN (technically it was faster than dialup but did not feel like it), email was limited to 25Mb (I needed to receive individual documents that were larger than my entire mailbox
This I learned (Score:2)
I've heard of Amazon's, Microsoft's, and Google's cloud offerings, but I had no idea Oracle had one too. I can't even imagine the prices they must be charging. But why would the justice dept even consider using Oracle over one of the big ones?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:3)
I just came here to laugh. Not even the Federal Government is dumb enough to use Oracle's cloud offering.
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I just came here to laugh. Not even the Federal Government is dumb enough to use Oracle's cloud offering.
Never underestimate the federal government's stupidity. Or any government's stupidity for that matter.
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Oracle forgets a major point about cloud services. They have to be both available AND work.
Deserving (Score:2)
Anyone who knowingly and willingly buys Oracle gets what they deserve.
No organization is more deserving of working with Oracle than the government.
Oracle owns the government (Score:1)
It's #2 in their "list of what we own" right after "all rights to software APIs."
#3 is "Lawyers to outspend everyone to ensure we own #1 and #2".
F. Oracle.
E
Is Oracle pure evil? (Score:3)
Is Oracle pure evil? Does anyone have anything good to say about them?
I know that I hate Oracle, after some bitter experiences, and everyone I know hates them, but I figure there must be someone somewhere that once had a positive experience. Anyone?
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Is Oracle pure evil? Does anyone have anything good to say about them?
I know that I hate Oracle, after some bitter experiences, and everyone I know hates them, but I figure there must be someone somewhere that once had a positive experience. Anyone?
The people who receive kickbacks to choose Oracle have a positive experience.