US Defense Department invites four cloud firms to seek contracts for JEDI replacement system After cancelling its contentious Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud contract solicitation in July, the US Department of Defense (DoD) promised a followup request for proposals to provide cloud services for national defense under a less catchy acronym, the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC). The Pentagon …
Does the DoD realise that they are immediately mortally crippled and fatally disadvantaged in the fields in which they propose to enter to explore and presume to assume a leadership position in, with any sort of requirement that insists that applications or applicants be US-based hyperscale CSPs [Cloud Service Providers]?
Uncle Sam may like to remedy that fundamental flaw rather than suffer the consequences of the mistake and short-sighted oversight in order to have any reality chance of united progress and global success.
I'm sure the Chinese among others would be happy to submit a very attractive bid and might very well deliver a superior product at very low cost. With adequate backing from their intelligence people, they would not be burdened by unpleasant constraint like the need to show a profit.
Of course the US requires a US contractor for a DOD data management system. They'd require that even if the country didn't have much in the way of qualified candidates. Fortunately the US does have a number of companies that look to be as qualified as any in the world. Now whether there is a meaningful job there. That's a different issue.
What excuse do UKGBNI MoD AWEsome* Services offer to not submit a winning superior product bid at whatever cost is necessary and required?
* Almighty Warfighter Experiment ....... https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/events/army-warfighting-experiment/
Are they waiting for a lead to be shown to them by a renegade rogue paramilitary operation?
The DoD has had a lot of problems with One-Ring-to-rule-them-all systems like the F35 and the Zumwalt - way over budget and mission unclear. JEDI would have been the same. Smaller steps with upgrades while testing/using offers better returns. Done right they can get a better deal by making the companies compete against each other in making sure the products are actually useful. "Done right".
To be fair, for a fleeting moment, to the DoD, they don't have a monopoly on over budget, over running projects. (SLS anyone?) Nor is this just a US malaise: The Brits are perfectly capable of screwing up a big project too. I suspect other countries are quite capable of such accomplishments too.
As to why big projects over run and go over budget: Well, there's a whole host of project management textbooks that explore that topic.
LOL, you don't understand how the military works - the only concern of a multi-billion dollar contract is to make companies and their owners richer. You should look at the last time the American military actually completely won a war that they fought ... it was 1783, they have screwed up ever since but it's still a nice profitable business process, wars are very profitable.
The best way to replace JEDI would be SitH, "Software in the Hardware".
A never before attempted unique concept, where software actually runs on hardware.
Once JEDI is gone, SitH will rule the galaxy.
A powerful SitH it will be.
We shall call it Darth Copyrightinfringement.
Sorry, Mr. Lucas...
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