Cut open a tauntaun, this JEDI is frozen! US court halts lawsuit over biggest military cloud deal since the Death Star

A fierce legal battle over the Pentagon's $10bn Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud IT deal was put on ice by a judge Tuesday – after the Department of Defense (DoD) vowed to probe itself regarding the contract. A ruling [PDF] issued by Judge Eric Bruggink of the Federal Claims Court this week grants the US …

[Griffo]

Who feels sorry for Oracle? No Really

Oracle's just upset that nobody want to use their shit cloud that can only provide 2012 level basic IaaS services. I think Gartner recently rated it as having "minimum viable features".

I fact I just found it and I quote:

"Oracle's second-generation product, named Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), was launched in November 2016. A year-and-a-half later, however, Gartner says it "remains a bare-bones 'minimum viable product,' and it is arguably too minimal to be viable for a broad range of common cloud IaaS use cases.""

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who feels sorry for Oracle? No Really

Hey, speak for yourself. I feel sorry for Oracle. It must be tough to know that you have never been loved.

[Ilsa Loving]

Re: Who feels sorry for Oracle? No Really

Yes, I'm sure abusive spouses all over, are relating very strongly right now.

[Forum Name 2]

Re: Who feels sorry for Oracle? No Really

Oracle: You will buy our extremely expensive shit or we will sue you...

Like all IT guys I have gotten calls from their salesdroids. They hate it when you say, "Uh no we don't use Oracle and we aren't going to use Oracle.

[jake]

Re: Who feels sorry for Oracle? No Really

To be fair, all telesalesdroids hate it when I inform them "Cold callers are put on my blacklist." ... What's really funny is when they call one of the other office numbers two minutes later and get me again, this time to hear "People who don't get the message the first time get a little star next to their name on the blacklist, meaning a permanent entry". Half of 'em bluster, the other half whine.

Telesalesdroids. Useless B-ark ballast, the lot of 'em.

[jake]

It's not the first time ...

...the DoD has been told to go probe itself. Won't be the last.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's not the first time ...

Suddenly all that activity in Area 51 makes sense.

It wasn't for possible spacecraft, it was the probes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there like a standard api or open sourcey way of like.. running containers and storing objects and data and doing stuff with it? Or is it all proprietary and silod and what do people even do these days with big data? Doesn't that all get fed into each of the big companies respective Skynet projects? If they made it all run in a container with standard interfaces the actual infrastructure provider could then be balanced between many places not just AWS and cut out of getting access to the data by encrypting it all. Why aren't they doing this it makes better sense

[ratfox]

Common APIs are not everything

There are probably constraints which are harder to realize in a multi-vendor solution. For instance, I believe there is a requirement that the entire operation should be air-gapped. And then, having data in multiple data centers would certainly cause performance issues, unless they all agree to build said data centers next to each other... Meaning they would never agree and keep suing each other on whose tax incentive gets priority, etc. And they would always claim the problems is caused by the other vendor. And they would sue the Pentagon to get a bigger share.

Honestly, I can't blame the Pentagon for wanting nothing of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Common APIs are not everything

"There are probably constraints which are harder to realize in a multi-vendor solution."

I wouldn't rule out multi-vendor in the future, I suspect that Azure will get an invite to play in a future tender, assuming there isn't an existing FedRAMP Office 365 solution that the DoD is happy with. Add in Google for specialized tasks and have a look at large data center facilities in Virginia and you may spot who the DoD will use in the future.

JEDI has a number of goals for the DoD, many of which are 3-5 years behind schedule, so using one vendor in the short term avoids some of the complexity of a multi-vendor solution.

I suspect Oracle will not be part of the long term multi-vendor solution - while the court case doesn't help, the details of the bid that have become public showed that Oracle wasn't willing to embrace a more flexible business model that involved Oracle sharing some of the risk with the customer. They were going for the traditional government contractor model of charge for everything. At least twice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Common APIs are not everything

Various links that maybe interesting:

AWS's public cloud locations - GovCloud locations redacted but given the concentration of DC's in Virginia and the DoD agencies based there, that is likely to be the focus or a solution. NW/SE/SW locations are also required to complete adequate coverage of the US:

https://wikileaks.org/amazon-atlas/map/

MS win $1.76B contract for DoD cloud services:

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/jedi-cloud-contract-looms-distance-microsoft-gets-two-wins-washington/

[keith_w]

Re: Common APIs are not everything

"I believe there is a requirement that the entire operation should be air-gapped"

How do you air gap a web application?

[Saruman the White]

Blakes 7

Can someone explain to me why a Blakes 7 logo is being used when the headline makes a Stars Wars reference? Mixing Sci-Fi metaphors?

[Roj Blake]

Re: Blakes 7

I came here to say the same thing.

But as Doctor Who would say, "Live long and prosper"

[jake]

Re: Blakes 7

In this scenario, I think Dr. Who should say "Dammit, Jim, I'm The Doctor! Why should I know where my towel is?"

[MarkB]

Re: Blakes 7

'But as Doctor Who would say, "Live long and prosper"'

A friend of mine (call him Fred) wound up another friend (Joe) by teaching Joe's child to say "may the force be with you" while making a Vulcan salute.

[Simon Harris]

Re: Blakes 7

I'm thinking it may be a reference to the Federation's Control.

Control was located on Earth, in the Forbidden Zone, it housed the Federation's computer complex to monitor information; political, civil, military: everything related to the Federation's operations and interests. It was the nerve centre of all Federation activity. Thirty years before Roj Blake infiltrated the location the Federation popularised as being Control's location it was moved to Star One.

(https://blakes7.fandom.com/wiki/Control)

[Simon Harris]

Re: Blakes 7

Bloody Hell! I've made two Blake's 7 comments within 24 hours (the other in the Buffy article).

Do we need a proper nerd icon here, or is that

taken as read if you've got an El Reg account? --------------------->

[deadlockvictim]

Re: Blakes 7

If we are to going to mix metaphors, could we at least hold the court in a quarry in south Wales please?

[Stevie]

Re: control

Nonononono.

Control is from LeCarre's "Tinker, Tailor" universe.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Maximum Power

Seeing that Tel Nation got his nose into a computer book for impressive jargon to use in his scripts or as character names (Server LAN - Servalan). I thought (Later in life) that he came across the name Oracle as well as the myth & truncated it to Orac (Or it may have been a coincidence of timing as Oracle didn't start up until Mid 77 & production of B7).

.

[ratfox]

Re: Blakes 7

Whenever I see people mixing geek references, I assume it is trolling. And 99% of the time, I'm right. — Morty

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

between a rock and a hard place

IBM just bought Red Hat. DB2 for Open, which was an also-ran to date, may be about to become a Thing. On the Cloud front Oracle can't reallistically compete with Amazon, on the DB front it can't compete with Big Blue and it's newly-aquired fedora. Time to innovate, if you still know how to !

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: between a rock and a hard place

The often heard cry of organisations - if only we could ditch Oracle's expensive solutions and go with IBM instead.

If IBM choose to make a cost/performance competitive Red Hat/x86 alternative to SQL Server on Windows/x86, then you may have a point, but it's likely to be hurt IBM's Power business on one side and struggle against MySQL/Postgres/MongoDB for existing RedHat users on the other. And then there's the challenge of getting application vendors to port from Oracle to DB2.

And then there's the likelihood that Oracle will benefit from IBM ramping up support costs for Red Hat. Yes it's speculation, but if RedHat licence/support costs rise at or below inflation for the next two years after a big rise in 2018, I would be surprised.

[RedCardinal]

>>since the Death Star...Oracle's legal warship drops out of warp, on impulse power

Make your minds up guys, are we talking Star Wars or Star Trek here?

Yours nerdishly!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are just trying to bag as many scifi nerds as they can.

Missed out a lot though, no mention of Space 1999, Star Cops, Stargate, or that weird Aussie one with the hook-nosed but ever so sexy lass in black leather.

I would get out more, but I am still translating Shakespeare back into Klingon.

[PhilBuk]

"or that weird Aussie one with the hook-nosed but ever so sexy lass in black leather"

Ahhhh. Claudia Black of Farscape fame!! Muppets in Space.

Phil.

[ChrisElvidge]

Farscape

Both Ben Browder and Claudia Black turned up in Stargate SG1 as I remember.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Farscape

Then parodied Farscape themselves in SG1 episode 200.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCNDdlCo4rA

[EnviableOne]

Larry Complains to mummy

Oracle are irrelevant in the cloud space, Larry thought cloud was a fad and didnt invest, so they dont have the capability to run the whole JEDI contract.

However, there is competition, AWS may have won, but Google and MS could both have bid too

[Rich 11]

Re: Larry Complains to mummy

Larry thought cloud was a fad and didnt invest

Except in product placement fees in the Iron Man films. Good call, Larry!

[Oneman2Many]

Re: Larry Complains to mummy

Google dropped out due to ethical concern, lol oh and they didn't have the relevant DoD certification.

MS are still interested in bidding.

[Velv]

Just think how big a wall can be built with the DoD not spending $10bn on IT

[Rich 11]

$10bn? That'll buy him 400 miles of border fence, or about twenty feet of garden fencing if the eminent domain lawsuits don't go his way.

[A.P. Veening]

"or about twenty feet of garden fencing if the eminent domain lawsuits don't go his way."

Make that twenty feet high and about six inches long ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just think how big a wall can be built with the DoD not spending $10bn on IT"

If the DoD don't spend $10bn on JEDI, they will spend somewhere between $11bn (10 years at current spend)-$17bn (estimated based on 50% growth in a 10 year period) on cloud services instead. JEDI is to try and control/cap costs while standardizing cloud procurement and avoiding significant duplication across 7+ different cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GE/Google/IBM/Oracle/SAP).

[Blockchain commentard]

You'd think it'd be cheaper for the DoD to make their own cloud. Can resize when they need to, not when contracts expire, potentially more secure if they run the premises/staff etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Military systems aren't allowed to build anything on their own anymore...

As a US Navy Vet, the Navy used to take care of and build all their own bases and then have Shore Duty billets to rotate sailors back home every few years to operate them....It is ALL contractor run now and 1000x the cost and no place for the Navy to allow sailors to come home for very long.....

[skswales]

With silver iodide?

[Glen Turner 666]

About Oracle's entire future, not just Oracle Cloud v AWS

Well obviously Oracle is upset, because their future is on the line.

Oracle make an expensive on-premises database. AWS make an off-premises compute cluster, which also includes a database API. So the US Department of Defence moving to AWS and re-writing their code to use AWS's API rather than Oracle's API means that the use of Oracle's database ends, which means that the annual licensing fee paid to Oracle also ends.

The threat from DoD's AWS strategy is not limited to DoD. They are a huge employer of contracted IT staff, and many of those contractors will carry their heretical notions into other government departments.

Oracle's complaint that there should have been multiple vendors falls a little flat. It's not the job of DoD to keep Oracle afloat, but to seek to maximise DoD's own efficiency. Which using just one cloud API does. But of course Oracle is going to try it on, after all if they win even 10% of the DoD's business that's still a billion bucks.

It's also interesting to reflect how Amazon owning AWS has allowed AWS to thrive. Oracle's usual strategy would have been to purchase this upstart system, much as they did with MySQL. But Amazon's systems are completely reliant upon AWS, so Amazon can't sell AWS without risking the availability of Amazon.Com's $0.5m per minute.

[Stevie]

Re: About Oracle's entire future, not just Oracle Cloud v AWS

a) military procurements are made with public funds and single vendor solutions are historically suspect

2) At what point does the old "Microsoft Amazon = monopoly and must die" rule kick in?

[Paul 195]

Re: About Oracle's entire future, not just Oracle Cloud v AWS

Amazon are dominant in this space, but not a monopoly. Azure is actually showing higher growth at the moment, and Google's cloud is also doing well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: About Oracle's entire future, not just Oracle Cloud v AWS

"Amazon are dominant in this space, but not a monopoly. Azure is actually showing higher growth at the moment, and Google's cloud is also doing well."

It depends what part of the cloud market we are talking about - if it's the "aaS" market, AWS has a big lead in IaaS/PaaS and the infrastructure investment to remain at the top. Azure and Google will also be up there, but at some point we are going to see consolidation as the also rans pull out.

Add-in SaaS and some of the items included muddy the picture significantly (Oracle and IBM's inclusion of software licences that could be cloud hosted but probably aren't, MS including LinkedIn and significant standalone Office revenues)

i.e. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-rules-the-public-cloud-but-google-microsoft-alibaba-are-growing-faster-2017-12-20

Wait a few years and I suspect we will see significant consolidation as the likes of Salesforce and Oracle realize that they have to use one of the other players platforms to get the scalability and reach remain competitive.

As far as growth goes, AWS are still growing revenue faster than the rest of the market combined ($5.42B in 2017) - it's just that for revenue vs existing MS/Google are rapidly expanding and the relative %'s look good.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Just paraphrasing...

"Oracle argued that by dividing the contract into smaller projects, or allowing multiple providers to bid together, the DoD would end up getting better service at a lower price."

There is no version of that equation that will provide better service and lower price where Oracle are involved.