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Is Amazon Rigging the Bidding For Massive Government Contracts? (vanityfair.com)
SpzToid quotes Vanity Fair:
The controversy involves a plan to move all of the Defense Department's data -- classified and unclassified -- on to the cloud. The information is currently strewn across some 400 centers, and the Pentagon's top brass believes that consolidating it into one cloud-based system, the way the CIA did in 2013, will make it more secure and accessible. That's why, on July 26, the Defense Department issued a request for proposals called JEDI, short for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. Whoever winds up landing the winner-take-all contract will be awarded $10 billion -- instantly becoming one of America's biggest federal contractors.
But when JEDI was issued, on the day Congress recessed for the summer, the deal appeared to be rigged in favor of a single provider: Amazon. According to insiders familiar with the 1,375-page request for proposal, the language contains a host of technical stipulations that only Amazon can meet, making it hard for other leading cloud-services providers to win -- or even apply for -- the contract. One provision, for instance, stipulates that bidders must already generate more than $2 billion a year in commercial cloud revenues -- a "bigger is better" requirement that rules out all but a few of Amazon's rivals... Much of the language of JEDI, in fact, seems specifically tailored for Jeff Bezos. "Everybody immediately knew that it was for Amazon," says a rival bidder who asked not to be named. To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers and provide "32 GB of RAM" -- specifications that few providers other than Amazon can meet.
The article also cites last year's "so-called Amazon amendment, a provision buried in a defense authorization bill that will establish Amazon as the go-to portal for every online purchase the government makes -- some $53 billion every year." And it also notes that Amazon employs more than 100 lobbyists in Washington, and "has spent $67 million on lobbying since 2000 -- including more this year than Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo combined."
The article says this controversy may be "a sign of how tech giants and Silicon Valley tycoons will dominate Washington for generations to come."
But when JEDI was issued, on the day Congress recessed for the summer, the deal appeared to be rigged in favor of a single provider: Amazon. According to insiders familiar with the 1,375-page request for proposal, the language contains a host of technical stipulations that only Amazon can meet, making it hard for other leading cloud-services providers to win -- or even apply for -- the contract. One provision, for instance, stipulates that bidders must already generate more than $2 billion a year in commercial cloud revenues -- a "bigger is better" requirement that rules out all but a few of Amazon's rivals... Much of the language of JEDI, in fact, seems specifically tailored for Jeff Bezos. "Everybody immediately knew that it was for Amazon," says a rival bidder who asked not to be named. To even make a bid, a provider must maintain a distance of at least 150 miles between its data centers and provide "32 GB of RAM" -- specifications that few providers other than Amazon can meet.
The article also cites last year's "so-called Amazon amendment, a provision buried in a defense authorization bill that will establish Amazon as the go-to portal for every online purchase the government makes -- some $53 billion every year." And it also notes that Amazon employs more than 100 lobbyists in Washington, and "has spent $67 million on lobbying since 2000 -- including more this year than Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo combined."
The article says this controversy may be "a sign of how tech giants and Silicon Valley tycoons will dominate Washington for generations to come."
Amazon employs more than 100 lobbyists in Washington, and has spent $67 million on lobbying since 2000.
It's true. We have the best government money can buy.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
One of the good-old-boys DoD contractors thought they had the sole source contract for bid rigging?
Have gnu, will travel.
Having worked in the defense industry, and seen it first hand.
Cloud computing is cheaper. The problem for the defense industry is security.
Amazon is the only one to pass the test. It cost them a lot.
Now they're reaping the benefit of that expense.
They are the only cloud player to have invested in defense level security.
It saves money, even if they are the only player
Actually, the $2 billion in commercial cloud revenue will cut out pretty much everyone except Amazon, Microsoft, and maybe IBM.
Oracle, of course, will fudge their numbers to claim that much from commercial cloud, but I wouldn't believe them. Database, yes. Commercial cloud, no.
The other big player, CSRA, makes most of their revenue off of gov't contracts, not commercial. IBM may be in the same boat. Rackspace comes close, but doesn't hit the $2 billion threshold as of 2014 numbers. (See Wikipedia)
Google is big, but is only FedRAMP Moderate and I have no idea if they have been certified by DISA.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
When Boeing launched the brand new 7E7 (which later became the Boeing 787), there was an almost titanic battle between various states as to where Boeing was going to situate the production lines, and eventually the issue was decided when Washington State passed tax relief laws which gave Boeing massive discounts for planes produced there.
The laws were ridiculous, with Boeing supporters claiming straight faced that the tax relief could be claimed by any aircraft manufacturer, so it wasn't state aid to Boeing (this was the height of the Airbus-Boeing state aid battle, initiated by the US government).
Problem was, the tax relief laws stated requirements that covered exactly the range of seats that the Boeing 787 was being marketed at, exactly the efficiency gains the Boeing 787 was being marketed at, exactly the production timescales the Boeing 787 was being marketed at, and all in all all the restrictions added up to eliminate all aircraft except for the Boeing 787...
Ironically, Boeing ended up missing both the production timescales and the efficiency gains cited as requirements in the law, but they still received the tax relief...
The 150-mile minimum looks like a straight-up âoefuck youâ to Oracle. Oracleâ(TM)s bare-metal team built data centers within 1ms of one another in order to improve latency and provide something no other cloud provider could provide. Due to speed of light limitations, a 1ms round-trip time allows for data centers â" at the absolute most! â" to be 93 miles from one another. Given routing & switching latencies, youâ(TM)ll usually want the data centers somewhere around 50-80 miles from one another. This is far enough to be largely free from most correlated risk except extinction-level events. Big middle-finger to anyone who wants to push performance higher than Amazon does. Wow.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write