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Google Wins Injunction Against Agency Using Microsoft Cloud
jfruhlinger writes "A judge has granted an injunction stopping the US Department of the Interior from moving forward with the adoption of Microsoft's cloud services. The injunction was sought by Google, which of course has its own suite of cloud offerings. Google claimed that the Interior Dept. failed to consider other options as required."
Apparently they run the Department of the Interior like the Air Force. I remember waiting four weeks and paying $80 for three ounces of a very specific lithium grease for some of our equipment that had an extremely similar clone at Lowe's for $4.
1. Google cloud services 2. Have random intern scroll through 100 pages of google 3. Go with microsoft.
When a company has to litigate to get customers/compete, it's not a good sign.
I don't think they're losing much, since it seems the Department of the Interior didn't seem interested in doing business with Google anyway.
It worked for SCO, oh, wait....
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The point of this is that the department did not consider all the available options. Google has made sure that they do so, and it's good for google if they choose anyone other than microsoft. The worst thing for google, is microsoft getting bigger.
If it rhymes it must be true.
This is never a good way to start a relationship with a client.
Unless, based on the prev experience, other customers would be less inclined to ignore them. It's not like the laws allow the govt to be "pissed off for personal reasons"... or is it?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
For medium skill sets, I've had the interesting experience of recently hiring a new secretary to do some work here, and set her up with (of course) a linux box, OO, all that. Taught her how to use even a PCB layout software in a couple days, amazing. But what really kicked my butt, was after a day or two, she comes up with "I like this, what version of windows is it, I've never seen anything work so smoothly before".
Yeah, big learning curve. Now, she's smart, to be sure. Shouldn't everyone commanding a really good paycheck be? If you're too dumb to move from one thing to another, why can't 5 of you be replaced by one smart person. As a small businessman, I think like that, because if I don't make money, none of us eat - I don't have the bernake's printing presses, you know. But in the long run, neither will they, you can only take that game so far. Gotta dump these folks who think they are entitled to getting paid for not having to think and learn. Hiring is tough right now. It's not that you don't get applications (gawd, you get buried). It's that no on worth hiring applies, and it just costs money to sort all the junk CVs and figure out why this or that loser got laid off their last job -- because as a business owner (and we all know this) -- your business is your people, you take care of the best or you fail. If you are forced to cut, you never cut the good people.....
If that offends some currently out of jobs, I'm sorry, but not that sorry. Too many of you have shown up here looking for work, and turning out to know only a tiny fraction of what they claimed, and when tried, unable to do as they claim, and/or do it so slowly I may as well do it myself. You may think you're entitled, but no, you just got a good ride for awhile -- doesn't mean you deserve it in return for nothing out of you forever, the times don't permit that for any business that's going to STAY in business.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
True, they may have brought up the injunction cause they wanted the money, any company would.
BUT the point is they won, thus the Dept did not consider options (or enough consideration) for other companys' services.
Maybe if this was like the 4th appeal, I'd say Google is being an ass, but winning the first round means they were in the right and doing as any company who offer similar services that were not taken into enough consideration, would do.
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
If is done by Microsoft, is probably vapor or smoke (and mirrors).
Wrong.
If Apple decided they want to be part of the bid. They should be allowed in the bidding process. If they were excluded by IBM outright without consideration, then yes Apple would complain.
Google wanted to be part of the process, Microsoft excluded them.
Yeah, and in this case they didn't cover it at all well. Usually, you just add a bunch of useless hyper specific conditions that essentially forces X company. Here they bluntly said it had to be a MS solution to even apply.
The fact that they won says there was evidence to suggest otherwise.
They did drop the ball, I don't want my hard earned dollars being spent on crap.
Got Code?
Google doesn't give a shit about some measly $56 million, 5-year contact with DOI. That's chickenfeed to them, and they know that contract will eventually go to Microsoft anyway. They're sending a message to other potential government customers that if they play fast and loose with the bidding rules, the big dog will crap on their house.
No it doesn't. It means that they were able to successfully argue to the judge that the injunction was necessary. It may be dismissed before a court case takes case, but the injunction was granted so that there would be something to sue over later on.
..and find it amusing that people are making cracks about how the govt dropped the ball, instead of the obvious fact that the govt. chose MS after considering options and google is just jilted. Because that would be evil.
And I find it amusing that you spout off random nonsense, which happens to be the exact opposite of the article, Google's initial complaint, and what the court found, which was that the government did NOT provide proper justification or approvals, or considered any alternatives.
Let me quote the relevant part for you to save you from having to read the article (which you obviously (a) did not and/or (b) are simply trolling):
Judge Susan Braden of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims wrote, in an order made public late Tuesday, that a July determination by an assistant secretary naming Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite-Federal (BPOS) as the agency's standard for messaging and collaboration did not include "proper justification or appropriate approvals."
and...
The agency's determination that BPOS was its standard included "no estimate of internal agency cost" of other options, Braden wrote. The determination also failed to list any potential alternatives, including Google's attempts to sell the agency on its products, she (the judge) wrote.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
It's not a surprise and it's really necessary. The contract itself is chump change for both MS and Google, but what's really at stake is whether or not the federal government needs to offer Google a chance to compete on contracts. As well as a chance to further its strides into the enterprise market for office software.
There is some argument over whether or not Google can provide what the agency needs in terms of security, but I don't think that the agency will be allowed to dismiss Google outright without giving them at least a chance to submit a bid and proposal.
Had, Google been allowed to bid and been turned down, it's unlikely that they would be filing suit.
But the government _did_ drop the ball. Not by picking Microsoft, but by not following the proper procedures in feigning whatever 'consider other options' requirements there were. If they haven't even bothered making up reasons why Microsoft won and Google didn't, then they have dropped the ball.
And lets be honest folks: There is probably a damned good reason why they were looking at MS products only, and it was most likely because they have an assload of MS Stuff that would cost a mint to convert. I mean if they require Exchange and Sharepoint, they have a metric ton of VBA stuff being used, and Windows desktops everywhere, why in the hell should they be forced to accept bids that won't work? If Google wanted to submit bids on MS products as a VAR that is one thing, but Google docs ain't no MS Word.
It would be like forcing a design house to accept bids from some guy who wanted to rip out all their Macs and replace it with Ubuntu desktops running the Gimp. Does ANYBODY think that is a useful bid? Would they ever in a million years give up all that experience and custom in house code written for Photoshop just to use the Gimp? of course not.
By the same token I bet if we walked into the DOI tomorrow and did an audit on what they are running you'd find a bazillion Windows desktops, with tons of VBA macros, everything controlled by Active directory, with Exchange and Sharepoint. What good will come of having to waste tax dollars on a bid for a solution that won't actually solve anything? Is Google gonna pay to rewrite all that code for free? Are they gonna spring for the cost of retraining everyone out of the goodness of their hearts? No in the end they'll make the DOI jump through hoops before they finally hand them a list that says "These are the MS products we require, because all our stuff is tied into that and we will NOT pay for a complete overhaul!" and then Google will say "Uhhh...sorry we don't sell MS Products" and the money will have been blown for exactly jack and squat. If the DOI had said only MSFT was allowed to bid that would be one thing, but this is just stupid. It is trying to force a product that the customer does not want because they don't want a competitor to sell them a product they DO want. And in the end it is just that more added to the debt for absolutely nothing gained.
Pitiful actions and bad form Google, and from someone that has as much marketshare as you do it just comes off as looking petty and vengeful.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
While many people here thought it's a fair judgement, are skipping the fact that it was the Department of Interior who explicitly told bidders to deploy BPOS (Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite) to deliver cloud-based e-mail and messaging services. The bidders must comply as a bidding requirements.
Taking the prejustice out of the case, I personally don't think it's fair to penalize agency for being complied to bidding requirements. However, may be it's the only way to stop Department of Interior from issuing such bid again.
They very well may have good reasons to go with MS and not Google, but they have to actually do the paperwork on said reasons. They are a government agency and have to show not only that they considered alternatives, but why they rejected them. In this case they did neither.
And after the government spends $100K proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that google really and truly does not offer anything equivalent to Outlook after all, then we can all have yet another good whinge at the government for wasting $100K to prove what we already knew.
But to get the injunction you need to show you have a case, and that you're not just harassing the other party.
For all we know, Google may have been able to offer a complete solution to replace all those systems - include training and migration costs - at a lower price than the MS solution.
Boolean logic: True, False, and File not found.
MIL spec tests are very stringent. In the case of lubricants (solid film) tests such as Falex pressure loads and minimum run times are critical. Different batches made with the same ingredients often yield quite different test results. The QC of mil spec lubricants cost more than the raw materials where I worked for 22 years. If the military wants to make certain its planes, and missiles, fly without critical parts seizing up or smart missiles landing a mile away because the solid film lubricant wasn't quite as durable as expected, then testing and certification is critical. Every test fluid, machine, etc all must be certified to high quality standards. You think the cheap crap at the store is the same as MIL spec materials, simply because the have the same ingredients? You are very wrong.
"Look at me, I'm insightful b/c I don't subscribe to the status quo!"
Corporate collusion with the government. . .why don't you Google, oops, I'm sorry, Bing! "OOXML" Yeah, it's not a tin-foil hat theory.
This cynical, apathetic attitude of yours seems to imply that all corporations are evil at some point, so why does it matter? I'll tell you why it matters: b/c one corporation has a corporate culture of corruption whereas the other has a corporate motto to do no evil. The average Slashdot user doesn't hate Microsoft b/c it's popular. When did a bunch of nerds ever prioritize conformity? The average Slashdot user hates Microsoft b/c of the company's unethical corporate culture and business practices. Knowing the history of Google and Microsoft, how is it possible to act like they're comparatively corrupt? Google may not always do everything perfect, but corporations are run by many people who have the power to make decisions. More often than not the decisions made by Google employees live up to their motto. More often than not the decisions made by Microsoft employees are in line with their culture of corruption fostered by Gates, Allen, and Balmer.
Google isn't perfect but that doesn't mean there's no distinction between them and Microsoft. If I only used the services of companies which are pure in intention and execution then I wouldn't have a cell phone, or internet service, or use prescription drugs. I can't boycott every company that's not pure and wonderful because here in reality those companies don't exist. But I can boycott (and publicly complain about) the worst offenders. That means Microsoft.
I don't know if Google has a legitimate case here or not, but do I want them to win either way? Yup, and it has nothing to do with a collectivist Slashdot mindset. Hell, I'd be fine with Google winning the case and then some other company like IBM getting the contract. I just don't want my government running on Microsoft technology. The government should only use Linux and Unix, but that's another argument altogether.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
This is Slashdot, so Microsoft is the evil, wealthy corporation in collusion with the government, and Google is the poor, downtrodden, Linux-using upstart who didn't have a fair shot, even though they're a multi-billion dollar advertising company with controversial ties to the administration and investigations around the world over their "accidental" neighborhood data collection.
But, yeah. "Micro$oft" and all that.
You forgot to mention how evil and proprietary Apple is. That needs to get worked in there somehow :-)
I mean I can see once reason why this was a pretty much no-bid situation: BPOS is Microsoft Exchange. Well if that is what you want, BPOS is basically the only cloud solution to get it. Yes, Google offers similar products in terms of offering online e-mail and calendaring and so on. However they are NOT the same. If what you desire is an Exchange backend for Outlook, and that is what some organizations desire, then you only have one option. This is particularly true if what you use Blackberries (and the government loves Blackberries) since BES works with Exchange.
To look at it from the opposite side, suppose you've designed a website for LAMP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and you find a nice host for that. You then get an angry letter from a host that does WIMN, Windows, IIS, MSSQL, and .Net hosting complaining that you didn't consider them, that they are cheaper and offer the same sort of thing. Well ok, I mean technically they are right. You can do anything on IIS/.Net you can on Apache/PHP. However it is a different platform, you'd need different supports tools and knowledge to use it and have to write your site differently. While the overall function (programmable hosting) is the same the specifics are not.
Similar detail here. Google offers similar overall function to BPOS. They are both online cloud based e-mail/calendaring solutions. I've used both, they both work well. However BPOS is Microsoft Exchange, Google is G-mail. If you desire one of those for specific reasons, the other is not a drop-in substitute.
And lets be honest folks: There is probably a damned good reason why they were looking at MS products only, and it was most likely because they have an assload of MS Stuff that would cost a mint to convert. I mean if they require Exchange and Sharepoint, they have a metric ton of VBA stuff being used, and Windows desktops everywhere, why in the hell should they be forced to accept bids that won't work? If Google wanted to submit bids on MS products as a VAR that is one thing, but Google docs ain't no MS Word.
It would be like forcing a design house to accept bids from some guy who wanted to rip out all their Macs and replace it with Ubuntu desktops running the Gimp. Does ANYBODY think that is a useful bid? Would they ever in a million years give up all that experience and custom in house code written for Photoshop just to use the Gimp? of course not.
By the same token I bet if we walked into the DOI tomorrow and did an audit on what they are running you'd find a bazillion Windows desktops, with tons of VBA macros, everything controlled by Active directory, with Exchange and Sharepoint. What good will come of having to waste tax dollars on a bid for a solution that won't actually solve anything? Is Google gonna pay to rewrite all that code for free? Are they gonna spring for the cost of retraining everyone out of the goodness of their hearts? No in the end they'll make the DOI jump through hoops before they finally hand them a list that says "These are the MS products we require, because all our stuff is tied into that and we will NOT pay for a complete overhaul!" and then Google will say "Uhhh...sorry we don't sell MS Products" and the money will have been blown for exactly jack and squat. If the DOI had said only MSFT was allowed to bid that would be one thing, but this is just stupid. It is trying to force a product that the customer does not want because they don't want a competitor to sell them a product they DO want. And in the end it is just that more added to the debt for absolutely nothing gained.
Pitiful actions and bad form Google, and from someone that has as much marketshare as you do it just comes off as looking petty and vengeful.
You clearly don't work in procurement.
The point of "considering a bid" is to establish all of those things you just said; a company can't be considered to just intrinsically know a bid from Google won't be any good, they need to actually see the bid so they can establish the facts.
A bid consists of a all sorts of things- firstly the price, but also consideration of the complete package, including costs to make everything compatible, converting archives, staff capacities for implementation, etc. If Google could offer to do absolutely everything required to make their solution work for considerably less than MS could offer the same (even if this entailed far less work for the MS engineers) then Google should win it. If they can't, they shouldn't.
That's the whole point of a fair tendering system. Ignoring that process is wrong, and a state agency deserves to be called out on it.
As an example I've played around with DIY audio stuff and something that lots of enthusiasts like using is Vishay-Dale milspec resistors. Seems kinda silly, using milspec resistors in something like a headphone amp, until you look at their properties. You can get them with extremely tight tolerances, and with low variance over temperatures. They are very good if you want to make sure you are getting what you think you are getting over a wide range of conditions. They are also good at dealing with the unexpected. Like maybe you are worried that the power might be able to momentary exceed the resistors rating. No problem, the milspec parts deal with that, a 1/4 watt resistor can actually handle 1/2 watt with no damage, at least for a bit.
Now you may well not need to buy milspec parts to get that, however those parts DO get you that. Their milspec resistors are above and beyond normal cheap resistors in what they are willing to certify. When the idea is hand building something with very tight tolerances (in the case of an audio amp tightly matched tolerances means the amp should have a minimal impact on the sound) it is a choice that can make sense.
Then, speaking of tolerances and variability, even within the line there are differences. You may find that for a given type of 1/4 watt 1k resistor you can get it in 1%, 0.5% and 0.1% at an ever increasing price. They all seem to be made the same, it isn't like the 0.1% is a different design, like some of the really high precision ones. Well the deal is that when they make them, they come out different. So they test them and batch them. If you buy 1% parts, they are only guaranteeing the resistance to be between 1000 and 1010 ohms. Good enough for most uses, however if you need it tighter they sell ones that are tested to be closer to 1000 ohms and guaranteed, hence the tighter ratings. Costs more though, as many of them don't come out that perfect.
No, to get an injunction they merely need to show there _may_ be a case. The final outcome of any litigation after this will prove whether there _was_ a case to argue in the first place.
Google applauded the decision. "As a proponent of open competition on the Internet and in the technology sector in general, we're pleased with the court's decision," the company said in a statement.
Yeah, it's all to do with 'open competition' and has nothing to do with Google's bottom line.
I don't fault Google for taking this action, but I do detest condescending remarks such as this.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
I see your point, but it would reward companies for 'vendor lock-in', which is far too prevalent already.
I once helped someone over at the US Dept of State to build the beginnings of a page memorializing the late Ambassador Holbrooke. The HTML rendered fine in all browsers including MSIE6 until it was uploaded to sharepoint. I don't know much about sharepoint except that it breaks HTML even worse than MSIE6 by itself. The way I see it, the fact that nearly all of the US government depends exclusively on MS products needs to be enjoined. Not only is the government breaking its own rules the majority of the time by doing so, it is knowingly employing security risk.
(disclaimer: I know, when "done right" Microsoft stuff can be more secure than it typically is, but seriously? That's like saying "when prepared right beans and cabbage don't make you fart.")
As I recall, the reason they were only considering MS products was because the spec says "Use MS products".
The spec SHOULD detail all the requirements, and products that meet them should be considered. The system of bidding is supposed to reduce the cost to the public by introducing competition, but clearly if part of your spec can state "MUST use the product of this particular supplier" then there is no hope of competition in the first place, which defeats the purpose of having a bidding process.
If you can choose a product on arbitrary criteria then the process becomes that much more open to corruption. I'm not saying it happened, but you must at least concede that someone could have received a fat wad of cash for writing that particular clause into the spec from Microsoft.
It's likely that you could very easily write a spec that favoured the MS solution on functional grounds, but coming in a box with the MS logo on it is not one of them.
Not always true. I used to be in the instrumentation business, and in Europe, all deals for equipment sold to government facilities and universites had to go through a bid process. It is very common that the losing party in the bid automatically appealed the selection, and that dragged the actual procurement process usually for 3 - 6 months. It was frustrating, but it was how to do business, so we dealt with it.
At least in Europe, it didn't strain relationships, as it was expected.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Vendor lock in is really a reason to re-evaluate your IT, not bury your head in the sand and keep cutting checks. If you wake up one day and realize that you absolutely can not switch despite the existence of competitors you have a problem. Open standards and open source software keep the vendor honest.
They don't require Exchange and Sharepoint, they require e-mail and collaboration suites respectively. By defining the need as a product you have made it clear you have no interest in the competitive process and wish to continue to support the incumbent (in this case making their position all the more entrenched, making this an even stronger argument on the next go-round... nice)
[see vendor lock-in]
Windows desktops aren't the limiting factor they maybe once were -- much open software runs on windows (some argue there's already more open source on windows than on linux these days) and much corporate software is going web-based rendering the operating system moot.
Again your requirement definition shows the real problem. And you haven't even decided if the product will "work" just that...
Let's face it: 90% of the users use the same 10% of the functionality of The Office Suite (whatever suite that is) and other suites like LibreOffice and in large parts even Google Docs already meets those needs. And not having some of these "advanced" features might actually be a good thing: That the spreadsheet is most commonly used as a database (and not for numerical calculations) should be an indication that all is not right in IT Userland.
Long term vs. Short term.
If you can move to open standards (and if not open source, then sticking purely with the open standard and not the vendors proprietary extensions!!) then you should be able to achieve savings over time. Even if you decide to stick with a licensed/vendor-supported option you will then have an easier time migrating to a competitor. This keeps them all honest. Competition is good for the consumer -- there is no competition in this fixed/directed bid to Microsoft.
aww shucks, just saw this... don't know why I missed it before I wrote all the rest, so I gotta ask: did I just waste my time answering a troll or a shill?
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
This is why no one is his right mind should go with MS products to begin with. They are a trap. /. should be well aware of this by now. At some point even the government will have to ween itself of this MS addiction, and yes, bad decisions from previous years will cost money today.
This is why standards are important. When you need to spend big lump of $ on products you should get to choose vendors. Anybody who posts to
It would be like forcing a design house to accept bids from some guy who wanted to rip out all their Macs and replace it with Ubuntu desktops running the Gimp... Would they ever in a million years give up all that experience and custom in house code written for Photoshop
Bad analogy. Most applications in govt (and elsewhere) are now network/server based, and most of those apps will run in any browser on any OS.
Why can't they list these as a requirement? If the customer already has a significant investment in these products, requiring new contracts to use existing technology, infrastructure, etc... is reasonable. Those responding to the proposal can certainly recommend alternatives but they'll need to justify the additional cost of migrating.
As an example, I'm working on a project that is using a fairly old content management solution. The customer needs some new functionality and a limited budget. As developers, we've been trying to convince the customer to get off the old software (even the vendor of that software doesn't have a copy that old) that has been "end of life" for a few years now. Unfortunately the customer has a very limited budget. Rather than covering the cost of upgrading the content management software version, all the customization updates to make it work with the new version, all the testing, all the documentation changes, etc..., the customer requires that any new work be built on the existing solution. In the case of DOI, maybe they are fairly limited with their budget (at least I hope they are) and want to make low cost changes where they can get the most impact.
"I mean if they require Exchange and Sharepoint, they have a metric ton of VBA stuff being used, and Windows desktops everywhere, why in the hell should they be forced to accept bids that won't work?"
The same reasons Microsoft wants people to dump Lotus Notes for Sharepoint.
Microsoft markets Sharepoint as some Lotus Notes killer but fails to explain the cost of migrating and rewriting all your Lotus Notes applications and fails to point out the limitations of Sharepoint and the fact that functionality that you had in Lotus Notes does not exists in Sharepoint.
Moron.
Heh, I saw BPOS in an earlier comment and my mind read it as Big Piece Of Shit. Thanks for saving me from reading TFA (although my acronym might still work).
In the context we are talking about a bid to provide these software solutions. In other words we are not talking about a contract to add (for example) an encryption layer to the e-mail system, we're talking about contracting an e-mail system.
Yes, once you have an e-mail system it's not unreasonable to require that the encryption system works with your existing e-mail system or that the proposed bid can cover all the costs of replacing the e-mail system as well as provide the encryption.
Hopefully at this point the solution you buy is based on open standards or better yet open source software such that if you do change e-mail systems you can continue to use the same encryption solution, or (pay to) update the encryption to work with the new solution, or (due to the open-ness) migrate to a new encryption system with little headache. I note that one of the first and most common tools for git is a conversion-from-svn tool. The openness of svn means that they can't hold your data hostage; and for customers this is a pure win. Your goal (to decrease costs) is to limit the amount the vendor can lock you in. So just because you are running Windows due to some legacy app that only works on Windows, you are not constrained to run MS Exchange/Outlook as there are open mail servers and clients to choose from. This means that the key isn't to specify just where it must run (in order to work today) but you must also specify the open nature so that you aren't subjecting yourself to additional lock-in.
The bottom line is that it's never convenient to migrate away from the vendor who has you locked-in: that's the point of vendor lock in. At some point you need to look at the long-term vs. short-term cost of staying locked into this vendor. By migrating to open standards and open source products on an as-can basis, and by meeting all new needs with open products you begin to decrease your long-term costs.
It took years to get this locked-in, and unless you're really pissed off, it may take you years to get back out, but in the interim getting more locked-in doesn't help.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
When the spec specifically said the only solution being considered was MS Office, then no, Google did not get a fair shot.
Also, if they list the reasons for not choosing Google, and Google fixes those, then it is very difficult to list new reasons when rejecting them on another bid, or when this contact comes up for re-evaluation.
Could you clarify your statement? I think I understand your point but I didn't really see any cheating by Unisys much less Google (who last I checked does not own Unisys). All I saw was a government agency, likely under pressure, loosening the rules to focus on the more import aspect (information security). Information location may be relevant to the decision but if Unisys is able to provide a better secured product cheaper regardless of location not only was there no cheating the changes improved the end product.
But you know it's easier to bash a major company like Google then actually get your facts straight and look at the small guy who has been around for longer than Google by a dozen years.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Why can't they list these as a requirement?
Because they aren't requirements, they are means to meet a requirement. The cost of replacement/integration should be considered, but there's never a reason to ignore options "because change is hard" unless "hard" has some monetary value and you accept and consider all bids and then reject them for that cost.
The issue here is that bids were accepted based on maker of the product, not features of that or any other product. If someone else came up with something that integrated 100% with the incumbent tech, why should they not be considered?
Learn to love Alaska
That the spreadsheet is most commonly used as a database (and not for numerical calculations) should be an indication that all is not right in IT Userland.
If you don't know how to use a screwdriver you're going to hammer the screws in.
My mom used to use Lotus 123 as a word processor! If all you need is a small flat file and don't know any databases, a spreadsheet will serve the purpose. The problem comes when your table becomes too unwieldy, or has dependancies with other tables.
I inhereted a project like that at work a few years ago. The guy started with a one-off report and used Word Perfect, and eventually turned to Quattro when number crunching was needed (figuring percentages) and wound up with dozens of spreadsheets, one for each month.
It took him two weeks to compile, enter, and format the data. When he retired and the project was handed to me, I imported the whole mess into Access (and I fucking HATE Access, but it's the only RDBMS available here), the process takes less than five minutes now, and serves up more than the one report.
Free Martian Whores!
senior government guy "you know getting hacked by the Chinese secret service isn't exactly going to do your bid any favors, apart from giving Matt Cutts old work colleagues at the NSA a good laugh".
Google should have smiled and taken their lumps like a grown up - you don't see BP share holders or all the British pensioners whose pensions have major BP share holdings suing the US Government over the way Obama and others bullied BP when it was an American subcontractors fault.
Pardon me for opining on something I know little about (well, I guess this is slashdot), but last time I looked at the cloud offerings, Google's was some crappy proprietary interface which I'm sure is quite fast when you work within its limitations, but hardly useful for general purpose stuff or anything you don't want tied to a vendor. Microsoft gave you a visualized windows box, so that's a great cloud platform so long as you're working with stuff that runs well on Windows. (You're not that tied to a vendor since you can always just set up your own Windows boxes in your own datacenter and move your app there if you need to). But Amazon has the only remotely useful cloud infrastructure. You get a visualized box and you can run the OS of your choice (Windows, Linux *BSD, etc.) or anything else that compiles on x86.
So Amazon should thank Google. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind would choose the Google cloud for anything. If they reconsider, they'll end up on Amazon if they're smart.
Yeah, I'm sure Google didn't offer Unisys any assistance in securing that contract. Also, GSA already had a deal with MS and backed out of it for a solution that didn't meet their requirements after forcing MS to make changes in order to get the contract in the first place. Not to mention that the Unisys deal ships yet more jobs overseas.
Another interesting point came up the last time this was discussed. DOI's requirements stated 'solution must be FISMA certified' 'BPOS is not FISMA certified' 'that's okay, we choose BPOS (we'll pay to get it certified after it's running)'. And Google's complaint alleged that DOI told Google 'your solution may not be considered because it is not FISMA certified' (although Google's solution has passed FISMA certification already).
From Google’s original filing the DOI could apparently certify BPOS-F themselves. They refused to review Google’s certification package before Google got their certification elsewhere.
Probably about as much assistance as Microsoft, IBM, and every other company that has products that are used by third parties to deliver a service. Unless you have some evidence that Google was the one putting pressure (undue or otherwise) on the Feds on behalf of Unisys. It's put up or shut up time.
As for backing out of the original contract with MS your article didn't exactly get into that or why they were forced to back out (or even that it happened). The only requorement it doesn't meet is the original locality of the information which they changed. I suspect Unisys put in a protest and won to get that requirement changed. It happens every day with federal contracting.
Yes the Unisys deal ships jobs overseas, that sucks, but how does that equate to Google cheating? Or Unisys cheating for that matter.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
It’s really nice how much taxpayer money Google is wasting here. They tried to convince the DOI they could meet their requirements and failed. The DOI wanted their stuff on a separate system and Google said it would be “logically separate”. Google shot themselves in the foot and are now suing and will probably cost the taxpayer more money in court costs than the entire contract would’ve been worth. If they were suing over a large contract where they didn’t legitimately fail at meeting the requirements it would be different. At this point Google is just being malicious.
There is a cost of converting from MS stuff, but the cost of staying with MS is prohibitive, especially when Google is willing to provide the services for $50/user/year.
I think another factor besides the cost of converting (how many of the 'systems' are actually needed?) is that they won't need all the folks in the IT department. And guess who's making the decision about the vendor and talking about the high cost of conversion? It ain't the Program or Agency leaders, it is the IT department leaders.