Use The Force, Larry: Oracle Playing Politics with Nation's Defense
This article is based on the introduction to DevOps’ish on 2019-07-28. Some parts are duplicated but this is a much deeper dive than I could do in the newsletter (and these 1500 words barely do the topic justice). Also, yes, I work for Red Hat. No, these views do not represent theirs. Please take a moment to read my disclaimer. Above all things, I’m an American, and this issue trancends business. Let’s talk about JEDI. Not the lightsaber wielding type; it’s US Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). JEDI is a $10 billion, single-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract for the largest department in the United States’ government’s cloud business. The process started in late 2017 and has had all sorts of twists and turns. The competition for the contract had come down to two suitable companies: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. But, Oracle has been pitching a Larry Ellison sized fit over the process. Specifically, Oracle has protested JEDI’s selection process since last November. ...