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March 3, 2021 By cs

Microsoft’s president calls for bid protest reforms

After years of pain over the legal battles related to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, Microsoft is calling on Congress to take a look at the protest process.

During a Tuesday Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on emerging technologies and national security, Microsoft President Brad Smith said it’s time to examine the protest process because it does not keep up with the speed of technological innovation.  Smith’s remarks come as continuing legal troubles threaten to sink JEDI, which Microsoft was re-awarded in September.

“We all want to ensure fairness,” Smith said. “And that includes a fair right to be heard. But we could definitely benefit from an accelerated timeline to do so.”

The Defense Department conceived the $10 billion JEDI concept around four years ago, but implementation has been held back because of multiple legal challenges from Oracle, IBM and Amazon Web Services throughout the procurement. Oracle recently filed a petition with the Supreme Court for a review of a decision on its own pre-award JEDI protest.

As it stands, a decision from a federal judge on a motion filed by Microsoft and DoD on portions of AWS’s protest alleging improper political influence in the award process by administration officials is pending.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2021/02/microsoft-president-calls-bid-protest-reforms/172248/

Also see: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/02/should-pentagon-reform-its-bid-protest-rules/172260/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Amazon Web Services, AWS, bid protest, cloud computing, cloud service provider, DoD, GAO, IBM, JEDI, Microsoft, Oracle, Senate Armed Services Committee

May 28, 2020 By cs

What Google’s new contract reveals about the Pentagon’s evolving clouds

For one thing, it disproves fears that the massive JEDI contract meant one company would get all the work.
Tools and a console built with Google’s Anthos application management platform will allow the Defense Innovation Unit to manage apps on either of the cloud services heavily used by the Pentagon.

Google will build security-and app-management tools for the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), deepening the Silicon Valley giant’s military ties and illuminating the challenges facing the Defense Department’s drive to a multi-cloud environment.

Tools and a console built with the company’s Anthos application management platform will allow DIU to manage apps on either of the cloud services heavily used by the Pentagon: Microsoft Azure, which won the hotly contested JEDI cloud contract, and Amazon Web Services, or AWS, heavily used by DoD researchers, from a Google Cloud console.

Mike Daniels, vice president of government sales for Google Cloud services, said the company’s approach to security both complements and differs from those of Microsoft and AWS. Traditional “castle-and-moat” network security uses firewalls and virtual private networks to keep attackers on the other side of some sort of digital barrier. The higher security certification, the deeper and wider that moat. It works well enough in a single-cloud environment but less well in one with applications running in multiple clouds. It can also present problems when you’re dealing with an “extended workforce”: a bunch of people working from home or different locations.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/05/what-googles-new-contract-reveals-about-pentagons-evolving-clouds/165524/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Amazon GovCloud, Amazon Web Services, AWS, cloud, cloud computing, cloud service provider, commercial cloud, Defense Innovation Unit, DoD, Google, Google Cloud, JEDI, Microsoft, Pentagon

August 7, 2019 By AMK

Cloud resources for government users

The Office of Management and Budget posted the final version of its cloud smart strategy.  First drafted in September 2018, the strategy includes a list of action items “to advance the Cloud Smart agenda.”  It also requires federal agencies to “rationalize their application portfolios” to support cloud adoption by assessing application portfolios and discarding those apps that are “obsolete, redundant, or overly resource-intensive.”  The CIO Council said it will develop best practices and other resources to help agencies with the rationalization process.

The cloud smart work plan will be executed over an 18-month period, and will be updated as the cloud market and technologies evolve.  Read the final policy here.

Campaign security assistance, at a discount

Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 for Campaigns is now available at a discounted price for U.S. federal political campaigns and national-level political parties. The service brings together Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility+Security with Exchange Online for Email, SharePoint and OneDrive and  Teams along with other Office applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint  and more.

A simple setup process allows admins to implement features like multifactor authentication, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, protection of mobile apps and documents and the ability to easily install security patches and updates to Office apps. The security service is available for $5 per user per month. Find out more here.

Keep reading article at: https://gcn.com/articles/2019/06/25/cloud-briefs.aspx

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Amazon Web Services, cloud smart strategy, DFARS, FedRAMP, Microsoft, multifactor authentication, OMB

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