back to article There may have been problems with the JEDI deal but you still wouldn't have won, Oracle told by US govt

In another chapter to a saga that refuses to die, the US government has recommended [PDF] that the Supreme Court rejects Oracle’s efforts to overturn a Department of Defense decision to award the $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft. Acknowledging there were problems with the controversial contract award, which fellow bidder AWS …

  1. Ilsa Loving

    Anyone but Oracle

    Hasn't the US gov sued Oracle for abusing past contracts?

    1. seven of five Silver badge

      Re: Anyone but Oracle

      Why should they? Getting abused is the point of having a contract with oracle, isn't it?

      1. DJV Silver badge

        Re: Getting abused is the point of having a contract with oracle

        Ah, the old drop 'em and bend over clause...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          WTF?

          Re: Getting abused is the point of having a contract with oracle

          I'm amazed but not surprised that Oracle didn't have three commercial cloud-hosting data centers within the US, separated by at least 150 miles. Three! Just three!

          Big Red? More like Mini Red these days.

          1. Robert Grant

            Re: Getting abused is the point of having a contract with oracle

            They're probably separated by 148 miles, and AWS/MS helped create the competitive criteria.

  2. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Par for the course, for Oracle at least...

    Sounds about right. Whilst the sums involved are vast magnitudes less, I have several experiences that spring to mind of being involved in ERP and other solutions procurement processes for UK regulated businesses where Oracle have challenged scoring despite very clearly not fulfilling the response requirements of the underlying RFP or regulated tendering process itself.

    Notwithstanding the fact that they do obviously win a lot of business, I think perhaps some parts of their organisation (in the UK at least) have this view that the rules don't apply to them, or that they can just bully their way through to a successful conclusion.

  3. spireite Silver badge
    Coat

    Going through the motions, but northing will change.... hence....

    Feel the Farce, Luke,,,,,,

    The heavy breathing is Darth, it's the Oracle lawyer running upstairs for his spanking...

    1. First Light

      Re: Going through the motions, but northing will change.... hence....

      But yet again the Reg uses a Star Trek photo - I guess it's a thing

      1. JudeK

        Re: Going through the motions, but northing will change.... hence....

        It's immature but it makes us giggle.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Going through the motions, but northing will change.... hence....

        Not always, in the past they have also used Babylon 5 and Blakes 7. I think they made a mistake once and actually used a Star Wars related picture for a JEDI story.

  4. Chris G

    'Smine!

    Stamping my feet and screaming if I didn't get my own way worked for me, until I was about two years old!

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: 'Smine!

      Ah, the Violet Bott legal strategy - "I'll thcream and thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick!"

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Although the latest court papers revealed the two [DoD employees] were negotiating for employment with AWS at the time of the JEDI procurement ..."

    and AWS still didn't get the contract !? That's outrageous !!

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Nah, that's just Amazon showcasing what newbs they are to government contracting. The REAL decisions are made on the golf course or at a ***ty bar.

  6. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    KEEP OUT .. Deep Dark See Mining of Mined IntelAIgent Networking Games at urWork, REST* and Play

    What is there to stop an Oracle or an Amazonian creating and deploying its very own private/pirate JEDI Warrior ProgramMING Project ... to joust and jostle with any and all other aspirant wannabes or Knight Commanders of the Cyber Realm/Virtual Terrain Team Seescape if ever challenged to prove who be worthy champion of true kings and queens and almighty protector and passionate lover of damsels in distress.

    Be advised though, that way is strictly one way, singular lane traffic. Step through that door and it doesn't open again to let you back out and unknowing of what you glean inside from the other side. If you can't handle terrified to death and/or excited out of your skin, step off the paths entering through the closing open door.

    Consider yourselves both legitimately and adequately warned of possible consequences and expectations most likely to be effortlessly afforded and personally experienced by those most worthy of the attention.

    cc .... Larry and Jeff @ their respective bunkers/silos

    * REST .....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer

  7. cortland

    Military tools that last(ed)

    I served 21 years in the US Army, retiring in 1983, and my last assignment, at a Signals Brigade HQ, had a computer that was housed in an "18-wheeler", generators not included. My first civilian employer was Wang Laboratories, whose 10 and 20 MB Top Secret rated drives were almost the size of a VW "bug", and felt as heavy pushing them up a ramp into the test chamber.

    Fast forward a little and some distance: At "Smiths Aerospace" in Michigan [later GE aviation] I was testing the very first improvement to some electronics fielded with the US Army's M-1 tanks. Nobody made the a good many active components.

    CK-722's, perhaps?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Military tools that last(ed)

      Whenever it is size that matters, apparently nowadays the smaller the better is the space race to be run and won ...... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/ibm-creates-the-worlds-first-2-nm-chip/

      But just like in days of yore, it doesn't matter a jot what you have, if you don't know how to use it properly and better than anyone else with something similar but of a different configuration.

      The US Army [well, certain postmodern parts definitely] has changed almost beyond all recognition since the times and spaces of your 1962 enlistment and 1983 retirement, cortland. And this recent development is encouraging and surprisingly abreast and au fait with some truly devastating, great game changing discoveries enabling improvements to be remotely jointly betatested to mutually satisfactory satisfying conclusion ..... thus paradoxically resulting in many colossal new beginnings exhibiting massive untouchable leads ........

      “Autonomy is crucial to the ability to operate in contested environments where traditional communication and navigation solutions may be challenged,” Breede said. “Collaborative autonomy enables unmanned platforms to operate based on a shared understanding of the environment without active operator control in those contested environments.” ..... https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/5/7/shadow-warriors-pursuing-next-gen-surveillance-tech

  8. Malcolm Weir

    Not wholly unreasonable...

    The idea that multiple vendors would be better value (as is claimed by the AWS/Oracle teams) is, frankly, suspect (as the gov submission notes). Whether or not the admin costs of having more than one supplier are outweighed by the savings on each line item seems less important than the costs of managing twice as many security solutions (and potentially cross-domain solutions between them).

    Yes, it's obviously true that no vendor is going to be immune from vulnerabilities, but it's also true that a connection between (say) Azure and AWS will provide twice as big an attack surface.

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