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Much To Oracle's Chagrin, Pentagon Names Microsoft and Amazon as $10B JEDI Cloud Contract Finalists (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

The Pentagon this week announced two finalists in the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI cloud contract process -- and Oracle was not one of them. From a report: In spite of lawsuits, official protests and even back-channel complaining to the president, the two finalists are Microsoft and Amazon. "After evaluating all of the proposals received, the Department of Defense has made a competitive range determination for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud request for proposals, in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. The two companies within the competitive range will participate further in the procurement process," Elissa Smith, DoD spokesperson for Public Affairs Operations told TechCrunch. She added that those two finalists were in fact Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS, the cloud computing arm of Amazon).

11 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. A good sign... by EndlessNameless · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At least the government is capable of making good decisions from time to time.

    Amazon and Microsoft are leaders in the cloud industry for a reason.

    I'd pity anyone who got stuck with Oracle's service.

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    According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
    1. Re:A good sign... by Freischutz · · Score: 2

      At least the government is capable of making good decisions from time to time.

      Amazon and Microsoft are leaders in the cloud industry for a reason.

      I'd pity anyone who got stuck with Oracle's service.

      With a bit of luck Larry Ellison will spontaneously combust and burn to a neat pile of ashes, like a vampire exposed to sunlight, out of sheer annoyance over this development.

    2. Re:A good sign... by KlomDark · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why? I've worked with both AWS and Azure, and I'd personally pick Azure as the better service.

      Is this just some archaic "MS Bad" shit from the 1990s, or do you have actual facts?

    3. Re:A good sign... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why? I've worked with both AWS and Azure, and I'd personally pick Azure as the better service.

      Is this just some archaic "MS Bad" shit from the 1990s, or do you have actual facts?

      So far it is experience.

      First, in our case, it was bad choice to try to move a predominately RHEL system of systems to a MS platform. It just plain isn't as friendly to RHEL as we would like.

      If you are a MS shop, likely as not, you would do better in Azure.

      So far, in Azure, we've had them basically kick the power cord out from under a BUNCH of systems, even on different availability sets....black out, power down, too most of a morning to come back online.

      They fsck up in Azure. That's not supposed to happen.

      So far, they are not that responsive.

      I don't know as much about AWS, only the shortcomings of MS Azure so far.

      We came from a VMWare setup, where you could easily snapshot a VM and restore it if needed. This isn't quite as easy on Azure.

      And trying to get a VM custom rigged with the exact CPUs and RAM you need, is impossible, they have pre configured VMs, and you have to choose from them...can't dynamically add RAM or CPU...has to take a whole step up in VM configs they offer. If you need one with only more RAM, you are SOL....it comes with much more CPU too, and of course, much higher monthly $$$'s.

      I suppose if you are coming into Azure, with mostly MS windows servers, it would be easier. If you can buy preset items from their 'store' offerings, I supposed it is nice.

      But if you are predominately a RHEL outfit..if you depend on Oracle and not MSSQL...if you have a lot of custom apps and server configurations you are moving from a regular data center to Azure cloud, well, it is definitely PAINFUL.

      Oh...and often for unexplained reasons....their VMs get really SLOOOOOW...command line take a long time to react even.

      And they aren't really good at telling you when they are doing things to the hosts underneath you...and you can find problems with your servers that are hard to track down...till you can find out MS did something under the covers without telling you.

      Yeah..its painful.

      I've not used AWS yet...but I have to imagine in our case, it would have been a bit more friendly and easy to transition to.

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      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. Huh, weird by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Weird, I thought Oracle would tick all of government's boxes. I mean, I thought potential for unthinkably ballooning costs is what usually gets you government contracts?

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    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:Huh, weird by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Funny

      Weird, I thought Oracle would tick all of government's boxes. I mean, I thought potential for unthinkably ballooning costs is what usually gets you government contracts?

      They were okay with Oracle charging them per CPU but balked when Oracle changed it to per CPU Register.

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      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  3. As it should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Both have FedRAMP, both have strong privacy and security policies, and neither is Oracle or IBM. All is right in the world.

  4. Re:I'm surprised... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    As much as Trump hates Jeff Bezos, I am surprised that Amazon was even a contender.

    Many people inside DoD detest Trump. He has denigrated veterans, and many were appalled at the way he treated James Mattis, who was very popular inside DoD. This is the Deep State pushing back.

  5. My money is on Azure by edi_guy · · Score: 2

    There is a very personal grudge between the current Whitehouse and associates against all things Bezos. Best AWS can hope for is to sue for time and hope there is a changing of the guard.

    1. Re:My money is on Azure by Gilgaron · · Score: 4, Funny

      As long as anything the President has to see just says "AWS" they'll slip on through. He'll have a Jedi Cloud for the Space Force powered by AWSome as far as he's concerned.

  6. That's because.. by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...they decided that Oracle would be much more appropriate for the SITH contract.