back to article Oracle trying hard to make sure Pentagon knows Amazon ain't the only cloud around

The Pentagon is no longer taking questions on its controversial cloud contract after making last-minute amendments to the deal – and has received another complaint from disgruntled prospective bidder Oracle. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract has a massive scope, covering different levels of secrecy …

  1. a_yank_lurker

    Final Source

    The Brass is doing what they typically do for a major weapons contract - choose a single vendor. This is a competitive bidding process before the award and some might invited to a second round. Almost all modern weapons contracts go through this. Apparently the Brass wants to handle this as if it was a weapons contract with a winner take-all outcome.

    If you are going play the game you need to learn the rules.

    1. Mayday

      Re: Final Source

      This is very true. They are also after a "single throat to choke" which is very common in Defence procurement.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Final Source

      Yes, nothing worse than standing in the middle of a battlefield with a piece of equipment that doesn't work and half a dozen suppliers all pointing the fingers at each other and doing nothing to help.

      At a software company I worked for, many of the customers wanted the servers, PCs, printers and other hardware (PLC, scales etc.) to all come through us. If something went wrong, there was, generally, a 15 minute window to get things running again, before damage in 6 figures occur. The last thing they needed was a server manufacturer claiming that they only support during business hours - the customer's business hours were usually midnight through to 11 in the morning. Likewise, they didn't want to hear anything about a 4 hour response time. When they rang at 2 in the morning with a stopped production line, they wanted somebody to deal with it and get it running again, straight away!

      Obviously, if the customer had saved money on a redundant server and the main server broke, there wasn't much that could be done. But for "normal" emergencies, the person on the helpdesk knew the hardware, the software and the customer's production line, so there was no finger pointing, just someone getting on with fixing the problem.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle's strategy

    I'm pretty sure that el Reg has this right. This is more about Oracle trying to keep mindshare than anything else. They don't have a cloud offering to speak of. And, given that their interest in me dropped faster than teenage "fashion" when I mentioned the importance of testing, I doubt they ever will.

  3. EveryTime

    Locked in "Legacy Cloud"

    Oracle and the traditional defense contracts have nothing to compete with AWS. Cloud (and "cloud native") has transformed how major systems are developed and deployed, and it's the most rapidly evolving area in computing. For Oracle, with it's nearly barely-existing(*) cloud capability, to call it "legacy cloud" is absurd.

    * I'm torn between "embryonic" and "nascent", and tempted by "inchoate".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle Cloud

    ...is swamp gas. Or perhaps a weather balloon.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle Cloud

      Actually, it's just a fart.

    2. Matthew O'Keefe

      Re: Oracle Cloud

      $6 billion a year and growing rapidly is one hell of a balloon.

      1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Re: Oracle Cloud

        Found the Oracle shill. Try checking what just happened to the stock price when the numbers were released.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like someone needs an attitude adjustment. A few "accidental" Coast Guard interdictions on a yacht or two might tune this problem up.

  6. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Single vendor lock in?

    Oracle raised a complaint based on "single vendor lock in" to "protect\ for DoD from itself?

    I think my irony meter just exploded!

  7. gregthecanuck

    Oh! Oh! A Star Wars reference!

    If the Pentagon is JEDI does that make Oracle Kylo Ren?

    1. Giovani Tapini

      Re: Oh! Oh! A Star Wars reference!

      "General Amazon", rasping breath, "You have failed me for the last time...", choking noises with receding footsteps

    2. ratfox

      Re: Oh! Oh! A Star Wars reference!

      I think Jabba the Hutt is a better fit.

  8. DonL

    Nuclear bunkers

    Perhaps it's already a contract requirement, but I'd put my datacenters in nucleair bunkers.

    In my opinion it would be naive to think a commercial entity could keep your operation going during wartime since it would be an easy target.

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Re: Nuclear bunkers

      Son, if you think that merely putting the datacenters in nuclear bunkers makes a system war-resilient, you've not been in the military. Or done any serious wargaming of the issues involved. They will be running dedicated lines between the data centers. These "lines" will be redundant and have a minimum separation measured in miles (except near the end points). It goes on and on and on, and they are not kidding nor are they crazy.

  9. hmas

    Fixed that for you

    ***

    It received 218 questions to that RFP, which included one about whether a request for an online commercial marketplace for third-party products and services was "intended to limit the competition to NOT ORACLE".

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