Do you remember that cloud computing initiative from the Department of Defense? After it was awarded the loser complained that it had lost for political reasons. Thenb the courts got involved. Then the entire contract was cancelled. At National Defense Meredith Roaten explains the latest developments:
The lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, better known as JEDI, didn’t make sense from a business perspective, said Alex Rossino, an advisory research analyst at Deltek. “It didn’t make sense on any level, honestly.â€
The Pentagon awarded an eye-popping $10 billion contract to Microsoft in 2019, a decision that was swiftly protested by competitor Amazon Web Services and led to prolonged legal wrangling until the contract’s cancelation this summer.
The entire affair would be comic if it weren’t so tragic. It illustrates so many of the things that are wrong not just with the DoD but with our politics and information technology itself. Here’s the upshot:
Now, the military is shifting gears as it pursues a new cloud construct that will be the backbone of its joint all-domain command and control concept, which is meant to quickly connect sensors and shooters. The new program — known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, or JWCC — will be a multi-vendor, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract effort.
While the Defense Department has lost time and resources pursuing JEDI, experts say the recent change of direction will not excessively delay the military’s information-sharing goals as envisioned with JADC2.
as remarkable an instance of making lemonade as I can recall. If you get into trouble for picking a vendor, concoct a scheme that won’t require you to pick vendors and call it a win. It also points out something I have been complaining about for as long as this blog has existed: the mismatch between the federal government and information technology. Agencies like the Department of Defense are such behemoths and so bound by their own processes that by the time they can actually negotiate and award a contract, it’s obsolete.
I’d like to go on the record as predicting that they’re underestimating the complexities of the multi-vendor scheme on which they’re now embarked. Cloud computing tends to tie you in to your vendor. It’s not like buying a box of laundry detergent where if you have a problem with Tide you just switch over to All.
