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Oracle Businesses Cloud Microsoft The Almighty Buck

Oracle Revives Charges That Pentagon Bid Was Tainted by Amazon Conflicts (bloomberg.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Oracle opened its appeal in a legal challenge of a Pentagon cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion with a familiar argument: the procurement was unfairly tailored for Amazon.com. From a report: In in its opening brief, which was filed on Friday, Oracle said the cloud project violated federal procurement law and was tainted by relationships between former Pentagon officials and Amazon. Oracle is appealing a July ruling from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge of the cloud contract based on similar claims. At the same time, Amazon is mulling its own potential legal challenge of the project after losing the deal to Microsoft Corp. late last month, Bloomberg has reported. The legal challenges could revive fresh criticism from industry, lawmakers and analysts of the Pentagon's handling of the controversial cloud project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. The project is designed to consolidate the Pentagon's cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. The Defense Department is facing accusations that former employees with ties to Amazon may have structured the deal to favor Amazon and that President Donald Trump may have unfairly intervened in the process against Amazon. Trump has long been at odds with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
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Oracle Revives Charges That Pentagon Bid Was Tainted by Amazon Conflicts More

Oracle Revives Charges That Pentagon Bid Was Tainted by Amazon Conflicts

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  • Oracle tainted by being Oracle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:11PM (#59380302) Journal

    Oracle's bid was tainted by being Oracle. They're utter bastards, as is well known throughout the industry.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Okay, it is "flamebait", but it's true flamebait. Oracle is one of the evilest of big tech companies. They seem to have more lawyers than technicians.

  • Now I'm just a white-haired old small town lawyer. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:12PM (#59380306)
    I'm just a homey, down to earth small town lawyer, I talk in a folksy manner that allows me to disarm juries and whatnot and so on, but it sure seems to me that Microsoft was awarded that contract which sort of negates the claim that it was tailored for Amazon.

  • Oracle fails to fulfill contracts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:21PM (#59380342) Homepage Journal

    After all the government contracts Oracle's failed to make good on, the fact that they're even still allowed to bid is more than they deserve.

  • I can see why people would fight tooth and nail over 10 billion $, the military should just cancel the contract all together. They will always find some reason to try and get the bid, well guess what? You didn't get it. It's worse than watching kids fight over a toy.

    • I can see why people would fight tooth and nail over 10 billion $, the military should just cancel the contract all together. They will always find some reason to try and get the bid, well guess what? You didn't get it. It's worse than watching kids fight over a toy.

      Problem with this logic is that the government actually needs modernized systems.

  • One does have to assess the ownership of this publication while judging the quality of the content they publish. Not so much before Bezos bought them.

    • Re: Washington Post (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gtall ( 79522 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:48PM (#59380492)

      Bezos exercises no editorial or other control over WPost. Your reasoning is classic Trump: I don't like X. X owns Y, hence X must have Y actively pursuing me. The man goes through life creating enemies in his mind, he's got no other reason for living.

      • Bezos exercises no editorial or other control over WPost.

        The idea that the owner has no control is laughable.

        • Bezos exercises no editorial or other control over WPost.

          The idea that the owner has no control is laughable.

          Has != exercises.

          Words have meaning. Specific words have specific meanings.

          That is not to say there is no subtle influence. Of course the employees know who they work for, and they know what the boss wants to see. That knowledge will influence what is written and published, although presumably the publication was purchased because of what it publishes -not to change what it publishes.

  • Oh an Oracle posting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:33PM (#59380402)

    Many of here on Slashdot tend to disagree about all kinds of things. Editor wars, distro wars, which circle of hell Lennart Poettering hails from, is JavaScript a programming language. But if there is one thing that unifies us all here on Slashdot, it's the unrelenting hate for Oracle. Case in point:

    Oracle contends that the Pentagon’s minimum requirements for the contract, as well as its decision to pick just one winner, violated federal procurement laws designed to ensure competition

    Clearly the Pentagon was so wrong to have a project so large that Oracle couldn't address every single issue. Government projects should have as many contractors as possible working on them! /s What a complete steaming pile of excrement of a company.

    • I'd say Oracle is a distant third for your average Slashdotter. It goes something like 1) Microsoft, 2) Facebook, 3) Oracle, ...502) Companies that built Nazi execution chambers.

  • Microsoft wins a contract tailored for Amazon??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @03:34PM (#59380406)

    If it was tailored for Amazon, but Microsoft won it, doesn't Oracle's argument fall on its face? Or is their argument that Microsoft is simply better at being Amazon than Amazon itself?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This was covered in an earlier Slashdot story, but basically, the working theory is that Trump intervened and told the DOD not to use Amazon because he doesn't want to support Bezos and by extension the Washington Post.

      I have no idea how true that is, but you better believe that the original contract was custom designed for Amazon to win. Microsoft is essentially building a new AWS-compatibility layer for this contract. (And also to help people move from AWS, so it's not just for this contract.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jezwel ( 2451108 )

        This was covered in an earlier Slashdot story, but basically, the working theory is that Trump intervened and told the DOD not to use Amazon because he doesn't want to support Bezos and by extension the Washington Post.

        If true, there'd be extensive records of it - no one is going to use 'Trump called me up and changed the decision' without CYA. If Trump can issue an executive order that can legally chose a specific submission, well too bad to everyone else - I'm sure that the EO would not need to provide justification.

        ...you better believe that the original contract was custom designed for Amazon to win.

        The crux of the problem.

        Microsoft is essentially building a new AWS-compatibility layer for this contract. (And also to help people move from AWS, so it's not just for this contract.)

        This is actually a pretty good outcome for consumers, as we should end up with flexibility to freely migrate between the services.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dissy ( 172727 )

      If it was tailored for Amazon, but Microsoft won it, doesn't Oracle's argument fall on its face?

      They just want it on the public record that it sucks to be Oracle because they lost to a loser who themselves lost to Microsoft, so judged by people who personally know how bad Windows 10 is.

  • And the real losers are the American citizens. No matter who ends up with this contract after the litigation is settled, we're going to be paying taxes for a system that puts sensitive military information into the hands of a single private cloud company. Am I the only one severely frightened and disturbed by that idea?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Do we know where the servers are going to be kept? I very much doubt DoD is stupid enough to put their valuables in a private cloud that is not their own private cloud. Either that or DoD has suddenly started to operate with foresight and expertise of Trump's company. No one is that stupid except Deutsche Bank.

      • Nope as setup during the obama regime the cloud servers that will be used for this contract for both the classified and unclassified parts are owned and operated by the winner. The winner does have to configure the software to meet government security requirements.
        As for where they are kept, this is the cloud so they are everywhere :). They would have to be located in the USA and would be in some of the larger Microsoft government server campuses so Virginia, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and two other places on
      • Where the servers are stored is not my primary concern. My issue is that whichever private organization gets the contract, they are likely to build the system using their own existing proprietary services which could create vendor lock-in. In addition to that, some of those underlying services could be shared with their private offerings which would leave them vulnerable to attacks on those shared services even if the attackers aren't targeting the military's servers directly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jezwel ( 2451108 )
          I'm sure there are plenty of smart people in federal government that thought long and hard about the security requirements for this service. if you can name some issues with just a few minutes thought, do you think these people would also have thought of them?

          No the problem as always is whether the right people were able to add requirements to the specification.

          Oh,and it seems Microsoft has to build some capability to meet AWS specific functionality, so your problem about vendor lock-in should reduce.

    • You're right. We should spend 4X as much to build our own system that's 1/3 as secure. That's 12X mo betta!
      • Citation needed. Who do you think would build a more secure system? The U.S. government (who can get help from the NSA) or Amazon/Microsoft?

        • 'Citation needed' isn't really useful or meaningful, because of course I could say "citation needed" on your original comments. It's a non starter, throw-away comment.

          Anyway, I think based on past history and how outdated our Federal, State, and local systems are I would say the answer would be Microsoft/Amazon in conjunction with the government would be the best bet for a modern, secure system. Contrary to what everyone on Slashdot seems to think, not everyone else in the word is a giant, incompetent dummy

          • Anyway, I think based on past history and how outdated our Federal, State, and local systems

            It's disingenuous to compare small state and local systems which have shoestring budgets to large federal programs. And while the federal government gets security wrong in quite a number of areas (Office of Personnel Management jumps to my mind), the sectors that need to focus on security (military, NSA, etc) often do it better than most private organizations.

            • Sure, and they will also be involved in JEDI. They aren't going to just hand over the keys to MS and say "OK, give us some cloud". There will be very strict controls in place, separate dedicated infrastructure, and the people really in charge of the security will still be govt employees. Most data even for the Pentagon is pretty boring and will sit just fine in the cloud. They won't be hosting NuclearCodesGeneratorApp as a microservice on Azure.

        • Re:The Real Losers (Score:4, Informative)

          by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @04:09PM (#59380580)

          Citation needed. Who do you think would build a more secure system? The U.S. government (who can get help from the NSA) or Amazon/Microsoft?

          The NSA only considers a system or software to be secure while it's still in the box.
          (If you've ever seen the STIGs they produce you'd understand this sentiment...)

          • The NSA only considers a system or software to be secure while it's still in the box.

            Sure, because they've got a stack of exploits they haven't disclosed to the vendor[s]. They know the systems are insecure because they've taken steps to make sure they stay insecure.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Hodr ( 219920 )

          The US government doesn't build US government data-centers. And the NSA will leverage their requirements on any contractor that does build the infrastructure.

          The largest single network in the government is the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), designed and implemented by the EDS (which was by HP) and it's a complete shit show.

  • I admit ignorance . . . . (Score:3)

    by sgt_doom ( 655561 ) on Monday November 04, 2019 @04:15PM (#59380614)
    as to the specific details, but recall that Micro$oft handed over the source code for Windows to the Chinese Communist Party some years back, so what's to keep them from doing the same with the JEDI data/info?????

    • They don't own that data. They do own the Windows code.

      And handing that kind of data to the Chinese, if they even themselves had the access to, is a sure one-way trip to federal prison.

    • All big customers get the source in the modify-for-yourself-then-send-it-back-to-us. It's where all the "VB7" projects came from... forks of the VB6 engine.

  • Shut up, Larry, you insufferable twat.

  • Wasn't this contract the one we heard about going to Microsoft?

  • "The Defense Department is facing accusations that former employees with ties to Amazon may have structured the deal to favor Amazon and that President Donald Trump may have unfairly intervened in the process against Amazon."

    Those two "mays", if correct, cancel each other out, right? Or they're both false and it doesn't matter. Or one is true and I don't care.

    But, since Microsoft won, Oracle doesn't seem to have anything to complain about.

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