My 2c...
"The objective of achieving commercial parity seems contrary to the duration and single award aspects of this contract. The single-award removes competition, which was the very impetus that drove the current cloud market.
Also, the potential duration for this vehicle is 10 years, nearly equal to the age of the cloud market. This duration fails to recognize how fast this market is changing… The structure of this vehicle locks DoD into one vendor for the next decade."
OK the first objection sounds ludicrous to me. The award of this to a single party removes competition? Surely the award of a multi billion dollar contract should ENSURE a very high level of competition to try and win the contract. It should mean the Pentagon can drive an extremely tough bargain.
The second objection is much more reasonable, in regards to vendor lock in. However, with clever contract wording, advancements in cloud technology (got that sounds awful - bloody wishy washy sales terminology), advancements in off premises distributed computing technology (much better) could be part of the contract and mean that the vendor lockin does not cause problems in a few years time as things advance.
10 years is an age in computing, but at least a contract that long should drive a bloody good price. Provided the management oversight is strict and the contract wording tight, DoD should get a good deal...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
