Microsoft Asks Google, Oracle To Help Crimp Amazon's US Government Cloud Leadership (wsj.com) 35
Microsoft is rallying other big-name cloud-computing providers such as Alphabet's Google and Oracle to press the U.S. government into spreading its spending on such services more widely, taking aim at Amazon's dominance in such contracts. From a report: The software giant has issued talking points to other cloud companies aimed at jointly lobbying Washington to require major government projects to use more than one cloud service, according to people familiar with the effort and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft also approached VMware, Dell, IBM and HP said the people familiar with the effort. It hasn't yet asked Amazon to join the loose alliance, the people said.
Amazon dominates the cloud-infrastructure industry with a 39% share of the 2021 global market ahead of Microsoft at No. 2 with a 21% share, according to research firm Gartner Inc. Amazon looms even larger in the business of selling cloud services to governments. Amazon's cloud had a 47% share of the 2021 U.S. and Canada public-sector market orders, ahead of 28% for Microsoft, according to Gartner. The National Security Agency last year picked Amazon as the sole vendor for a cloud contract that could be worth potentially as much as $10 billion over the next decade, renewing an existing business relationship.
Amazon dominates the cloud-infrastructure industry with a 39% share of the 2021 global market ahead of Microsoft at No. 2 with a 21% share, according to research firm Gartner Inc. Amazon looms even larger in the business of selling cloud services to governments. Amazon's cloud had a 47% share of the 2021 U.S. and Canada public-sector market orders, ahead of 28% for Microsoft, according to Gartner. The National Security Agency last year picked Amazon as the sole vendor for a cloud contract that could be worth potentially as much as $10 billion over the next decade, renewing an existing business relationship.
Here's a thought (Score:3)
Why doesn't M$, Google and whom ever up their game ? Instead they are using the Jeff Bezos Maneuver. "If I can't actually MAKE a better lander for NASA, then I'll just lobby Politicians instead" The is a reason AWS is number one.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a fun anecdote: I've actually worked on several projects for the federal government that saw tens of millions in cloud spend. Want to know how the cloud provider was determined? The managing director had a relationship with a vendor who was an AWS reselle
Re: (Score:2)
I mean - both can be true. It can be the best cloud offering, and have also spent lots of money lobbying. They aren't mutually exclusive. Business people are smart like that - leave no stone unturned, win at all costs and all that. I've used AWS, Google's cloud, and Microsoft's, and overall, AWS is the best offering hands down They aren't even close. So, I think it's M$ just making sour grapes and whining. (Whilst yes, there are specific places it's not like GKE, etc. etc., there are also very big specifi
Re: (Score:2)
I agree it does smell cartel-ish. I can see a consortium forming cloud standards, which is probably a good thing, but to get together to collude against Google sales should be clearly punished.
MS doesn't like it when somebody else beats them at Business Monopoly after wining so often the prior 4 decades.
Correction (Score:1)
Correction: "against Amazon sales". (I had browsers on the mind.)
Wahhh (Score:2)
Capitalism is great for mega corps, until it isn't. SmallestViolin.mp3
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism is great for mega corps, until it isn't. SmallestViolin.mp3
If you live in a capitalist country, move to one that isn't and report back. Corporations have too much control of our government in the USA. Let's figure out how to limit their powers instead of bitching about a monetary system that has brought more people out of poverty than any other.
Re: (Score:3)
If you live in a capitalist country, move to one that isn't and report back. Corporations have too much control of our government in the USA. Let's figure out how to limit their powers instead of bitching about a monetary system that has brought more people out of poverty than any other.
No arguments there. I'm just giggling about one of the worlds largest software companies known for being anti competitive is crying about losing business to competition.
Re: (Score:2)
No arguments there. I'm just giggling about one of the worlds largest software companies known for being anti competitive is crying about losing business to competition.
Heh, my mistake. That's what I get for "combative reading".
Re: (Score:2)
There are reasons, and then there are reasons... (Score:5, Informative)
The reason that Microsoft is having so much difficulty penetrating the enterprise and government cloud computing market isn't because of any particular undue favoritism aimed at Amazon -- but nor is it just because Amazon's offerings are all that great. Certainly all of the lawsuits that Microsoft and Amazon keep throwing back and forth at each other plays an outsized role in things, but that's not the entire story either.
It's also because Microsoft's Azure offerings are, to put it bluntly, just that bad. They have become so completely reliant upon their near absolute dominance in the operating system market, that they've completely forgotten how to make genuinely innovative and high quality products.
Re: (Score:2)
More and more MS products feel like a potpourri of small projects forced together under a vice press. You no longer have to learn one app, but 50 mini-apps. There's no unifying principle, no D.R.Y. in UI and feature design. People use them because their org "got a deal" in a bundle, but otherwise nobody would buy them direct because on their own they suck the big throbbing one.
Re: (Score:3)
It's also because Microsoft's Azure offerings are, to put it bluntly, just that bad. They have become so completely reliant upon their near absolute dominance in the operating system market, that they've completely forgotten how to make genuinely innovative and high quality products.
I would honestly be amazed if this statement is taken at face value by anyone that reads it. Their operating system business has been in a slow decline for around the last decade or so. They make so much more money from the combined sales of Azure and O365 than Windows that it makes me laugh out loud to think anyone would suggest the contrary.
Can you point to some specific examples of Microsoft's "just that bad" offerings in the Azure ecosystem? I'm sure there are a few, since AWS is still the leader in b
Re: (Score:2)
The need to use PowerShell to interact with AD in the cloud sucks pretty bad, there's no "normal" APIs , it's pretty clear overall Azure isn't an API driven offering, which makes automation a total bear. Whilst Google's offering is API driven (more than AWS), it's also kinda flaky at scale, and you just kinda don't know when Google is randomly gonna decide to turn something off. We used BigTable for some analytics work a couple years ago, and randomly half way through the project the queries just started re
Re: (Score:2)
It's also because Microsoft's Azure offerings are, to put it bluntly, just that bad.
What's wrong with Azure? Serious question.
Re: (Score:2)
What's wrong with Azure? Serious question.
Primarily bugs and counterintuitive design.
Re: (Score:2)
I've also heard that the constant upsell is really annoying.
Re: (Score:2)
constant undocumented changes
Re: (Score:2)
Forgotten?
Re: (Score:2)
Two for twice the price...or more! (Score:2)
How do they envision this working, 'using more than one cloud provider' ? Replicate resources and infrastructure in each? Use the 'cheapest' individual resources (db, compute, storage) in whichever provider, and make them work together? Have competing teams working on different platforms?
You can't just divide up the work between providers like you're shipping packages or building roads. If I were assigned to do this, I'd have all my infra in one provider and perhaps a CDN endpoint in another or something, b
Re: (Score:2)
Simply put, they're still butt-hurt about the DoD cloud contract and losing the NSA $10B contract. That's a lot of revenue down the tubes.
Whiner Whiner Chicken Loser (Score:2)
Don't hate that someone else has a better mouse trap.
Build a better and price competitive mouse trap.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
LOL!!!!!! :) :) :)
I wonder if rats are ever lactose intolerant...... :-?
They actually have a point (Score:3, Interesting)
Over-reliance on AWS GovCloud is going to make WWIII very interesting. It would not be that hard for Russia and Chinese special forces to infiltrate the USA and take out those facilities because that's literally the sort of stuff Russian, Chinese and NATO special forces are trained and equipped to do.
The more GovCloud-like services are used, the harder it would be for an enemy alliance to use special forces and irregulars acting as sleepers to physically attack those data centers.
Re: (Score:2)
I already have clients wanting to migrate workloads out of AWS and I think US-EAST is a vulnerability. To your point, I think that gov't needs to be looking at diversity in cloud providers as well as in terms of deployment redundancy. There are also a lot of commercial clients who don't like Amazon because they're a competitor etc. So OCI and GCP are alternatives. IBM's offerings are a joke so they'll try to win clients based on the lowest cost for computing and storage. There are also a ton of smaller, bou
We can't compete! Help! (Score:4, Insightful)
Years ago when AWS was nascent and was just this organic thing that grew out of Amazon's core IT business I wondered where were the others?
Microsoft, IBM, and Google were all prime candidates to start offering these services but they didn't jump on it. Oracle wasn't a real player even back then because of their hardware stack absorption of Sun and dealings with Fujitsu. Does anybody remember the Oracle Database Machine?
Even Ballmer laments that here: [cnbc.com]
“Azure -- I wish we probably started a year or so, two years earlier,” Ballmer said in an audio conversation streamed live on the mobile app Clubhouse. “We started actually with platform as a service instead of infrastructure as a service. Probably we would do that a little bit differently. It cost us a little bit of time in the eventual battle, if you will, with AWS.”
AWS started in 2006, Azure didn't come around with similar offerings until 2010. Whifour-year a four year gap you have to put it into the context of the economy and gov't spending/procurement in 2009. The ARRA pushed a ton of money into bureaucrat's budgets. Amazon was all over DC like flies on shit, I mean they were already there just over the Potomac! The fact that the US-EAST region for AWS has grown largely on gov't business shouldn't be shocking to anybody. The GOV-CLOUD Region was also something that Microsoft didn't offer. Now there are two GOV-CLOUD regions. They had symposiums and sessions all selling AWS and they listened and grew a loyal following among DC IT folks.
So now years later, after offering "Me Too" services, Microsoft is crying because they can't compete? AWS is wrapping MSFT products on their platform for clients who want to run MSFT workloads. This is more than likely creating a dent in traditional licensing revenue for Microsoft but they already have agreements and they don't want to piss off their client base. If Microsoft wants the business, they have to compete, get tougher on pricing, be innovative in offerings and work with third parties to provide better migration services.
Instead of complaining, Microsoft should be doing.
Mr. Government, have we got a deal for you (Score:2)
SatNad: Mr. Government, Microsoft here. We've been evaluating your business and we think we can help you become more productive. We offer our business suite of software that will keep tabs on everything your employees do. If they aren't showing up on our Feed-to-Home, we know they are not being productive. What says productivity like PowerPoints, eh? And our efforts on security are legendary, you may have heard about us in the press.
Now, we bring some extra heavy hitters to the table with us. There's Google