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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.
When a company has to litigate to get customers/compete, it's not a good sign.
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!
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.
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.
..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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.