back to article Amazon to ask court to block DoD's $10bn early Valentine's date with a Microsoft JEDI

Amazon Web Services is expecting a decision next month from a US court about whether the brakes will be slammed on the Pentagon's lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract awarded to Microsoft. The filing (PDF), on 13 January, sets up the lawyer paydays schedule for key dates including 11 February, when …

  1. iron Silver badge

    Aww poor Jeff is pissed because all the dirty money and time he spent to game the system didn't work.

    1. israel_hands

      Not that I'm a particular fan of Amazon or Bozo, but the only gaming of the system here appears to be from Trump.

      When they first announced they were looking for a single vendor AWS were far and away the obvious choice, just because they're better at the clouds than Microsoft. The waters then got muddied when Trump and one of his moronic spawn started spouting off about it because the Washington Post keeps winding them up by printing true things about what a pack of cockwombles they are.

      Not sure how you think AWS/Bozo "gamed the system", unless you consider them to have unfairly and despicably rigged the entire process by producing a better offering than MS and then, like the underhanded bastards they are, offering to let people use it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Did Trump butt in where he shouldn't have? Absolutely. Did Amazon try to game the system? Also absolutely.

        The most egregious example is Deap Ubhi who worked for AWS, left and went to DoD, and there worked on a 4 person team doig the research for the JEDI program and while he was on this tean he was dicussing with Amazon what they would pay him to come back and work for AWS which he ultimately did.

        1. phuzz Silver badge

          I'm assuming Microsoft (and Google and Oracle and whoever else was up for this), was also trying similar tricks?

          For $10B why wouldn't you?

        2. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          "Did Trump butt in where he shouldn't have? Absolutely.''

          Fixed it for ya. I think Trump is looking at cost efficiency, like ANY good businessman would. Not like politicians. It's why "they" hate him so much!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Aww poor Jeff is pissed because all the dirty money and time he spent to game the system didn't work"

      If you want to look for dirty money spent gaming the system, look at the incumbent DoD IT vendors - while Amazon (and Microsoft for that matter) may not be squeaky clean, the competition for JEDI was covered in so much pork barrel grease they couldn't submit a competitive tender to save themselves.

      Want a server? Sure, that will cost you the this heavily discounted rate. Want "DoD approved" cables and security cleared staff to install it? That will cost you three arms and a leg. And will probably require the security cleared staff to come back for a second visit so don't go spending that second leg... And we have charged you upfront for 10 years support. And no, there's no discount for decommissioning the server early. There is however an additional decommissioning charge. Got any more arms and legs?

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      "poor Jeff is pissed because all the dirty money and time he spent to game the system didn't work."

      just like the rest of us, "the government" (which _IS_ "the people" or supposed to be) should be able to pick what it wants and buy THAT product, and NOT be *SUED* for *NOT* *BUYING* *A* *DIFFERENT* *ONE*.

      "Sewers" - ABusing the legal system to enrich lawyers since, like, forever.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This week's JEDI troll pic

    Okay, I give up- don't recognise her at all. Which sci-fi franchise that isn't Star Wars does this week's thumbnail image come from?

    The one-off girlfriend who dies tragically at the end of an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This week's JEDI troll pic

      > Okay, I give up- don't recognise her at all.

      Kaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnn't you see it?

      Oh, sorry, that's the one half-way down. As you were.

      1. Benchops

        Re: This week's JEDI troll pic

        I'm still waiting for a Gate picture for this story.

    2. whitepines
      IT Angle

      Re: This week's JEDI troll pic

      Star Trek Deep Space 9 (presumably) seeing as that's Dax and Worf.

  3. whoseyourdaddy

    I'm OK with MSFT winning this. If anything goes sideways, I believe that pain will be self-inflicted. If MSFT has to hire armies of extra H1B's (you know they do) to solve these problems, everyone who pays by the minute for Azure wins!

    Meanwhile, while I use the embedded Office in Hotmail, it completely can't follow rules to divert messages by subject contents to save its life.

    Several times a day, Anderson Windows, SeXXXy Ladies, Quicken/Intuit, 5G Male Sex help, ADT Security or any of these other knuckle-dragging morons.

    Creating Rules in Hotmail is an exercise in futility. Premium Hotmail? Why don't I just hang a kick-me-hard sign on my ass.

    Maybe the US Govt can fix it. Ha Ha!

    Hello ZoHo Mail.

  4. W. Anderson

    Microsoft software catastrophe

    I am fully aware, from credible media posts from several sources that the Trump Administration blocked Amazon from securing a bid on any Defense Department or any other US Government Federal Government contract "Just because" Trump himself has become/is mentally unbalanced by articles in the Washington Post - owned by Jeff Bezos, who also is principle shareholder in Amazon.

    Completely sick and infantile attitude by Trump, as usual.

    Amazon may have obtained some excellent technical reasons in it's objections to the Microsoft deal today, January 14, 2020 - with headlines announcements on every major USA TV and print media of US National Security Agency (NSA) - for first time ever - publicly disclosing a severe vulnerability in Microsoft Operating Systems (OS) software, having roots in the company's OS cryptographics functionality being broken, allowing all sorts of hackers into controlling the entire software infrastructure.

    Even under a Trump Administration strict mandate, the US Defense department would be completely brain dead to proceed with such a critical contract award for Microsoft proven crappy software.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AWS did not win the deal. So what, that's business. Deal with it!

    Maybe if Amazon as a whole behaved more responsibly globally in all their business they may have faired better.

    Amazon is the organisation not AWS. There are serious issues with other parts the Amazon portfoliio of services that could impact the AWS services.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > AWS did not win the deal. So what, that's business. Deal with it!

      If they don't win on appeal then you can expect to get one of these free with every Amazon order.

  6. Cssmonaut

    bit o karma?

    There was an article on here the other day, reconfirming that not only do Amazon not pay Tax, they get $129M worth of rebates... Yet they feel they should be allowed to dip their snout into the tax dollars they didn't contribute to? Get f*cked Jeff, you miserable human being

  7. Kev18999

    I was told as early as 2014 that AWS was gonna get the contract outright. There were people in bed with Amazon working for the Feds influencing the decision making without much transparency. If you ever worked at the Feds, nothing there ever makes sense. Their decision making process completely goes against most regulations for bribery. I know competing firms told me they were never given a chance to show their goods and services properly before getting shunned by Fed decision makers. While Trump obviously had an agenda but luckily it's on the right track as Azure makes more sense for the Fed.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "I was told as early as 2014 that AWS was gonna get the contract outright."

      I'm not entirely surprised - Google were already making noises that they didn't want DoD work and Microsoft had no precursor to GovCloud facilities so it only left AWS or the pack of crooks that ran the majority of the DoD facilities already.

      What you call bribery, I suspect AWS will consider the cost of winning business. The incumbant data centre suppliers didn't want AWS to become a competitor so cited security risks from using "the cloud". AWS and Google then worked closely with the DoD to produce real security requirements that ALL DoD suppliers had to meet and suddenly, most of the incumbent suppliers realised they didn't meet their stated levels of security and charged the DoD to resolve their security issues.

      Consider that AWS bribery if you wish. The DoD likely considers it fixing the stranglehold many of the incumbent suppliers had over them. I'm not claiming there is no lock-in with AWS - merely that it's the least bad available option for the DoD. And awarding JEDI to Azure means less diversity than JEDI to AWS with GovCloud O365 in Azure - now it's all in Azure. You decide if that's the more sensible option given Azure will only complete full GovCloud resilience late-2020 or early-2021.

      And on the cost saving side, JEDI will struggle to save the billions anticipated if a significant chunk of the migration will be from AWS to Azure rather than addressing migrations from remote third-party data centres into GovCloud and they have to delay the start to let Microsoft complete their GovCloud facilities.

  8. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    The first rule of Fight Club...

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