Microsoft Wins $927 Million Pentagon Contract To Provide Technical Support (petri.com) 137
Microsoft has secured a massive $927m contract to provide technical support and consultation to the United States Department of Defense. This is the latest in a series of key deals that Microsoft has won with the US military. From a report: The contract comes after the software giant Microsoft secured a deal in February 2016 with the Department of Defense (DoD) to bring Windows 10 to all 4m of its employees within a 12-month timeframe. This was the largest enterprise deal for Microsoft in the company's history. In 2013, Microsoft signed a similar deal to bring Windows 8 to 75pc of all DoD employees.
Sputnik news? (Score:2, Troll)
Really? Cowboy Neal would have had shit fits about the Daily Mail, much less this ....
Can't we go back to hosing some poor fool's blog?
ARS has a story on this on their homepage (Score:2)
http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
Highlights:
- Indicates it's a 5-year contract
- Requires access rights to Microsoft's proprietary (closed-source) code
- Direct support from Microsoft's internal employees—not from outsourced contractors
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Sputnik News reporting on the latest WikiLeaks dump several minutes before WikiLeaks posts its own updates.
Looks legit, guys.
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The DoD not only gets a custom version of Windows, but they also have access to the source code. They aren't going to be worrying about the malware built-in to Windows 10 because it won't be present in their versions. Of course the DoD has their own spyware, which is what the M$ spyware will be replaced with.
I used to do contract work for the DoD at US Air Force bases around the world. Lots of that involved installing said DoD spyware on their systems.
Conflict of interest? (Score:3)
Doesn't this make it in Microsoft's interest to introduce obscure, random (but ultimately harmless) annoyances into the DoD version of Win10 so they will maintain their tech support contract?
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And now you know why Microsoft's military contracts are what's keeping them in business.
A broken version of Windows is worth more to them than a working one, same reason they fired a lot of their QA staff. Who needs them when they can charge the customer for the privilege of having their mission-critical systems actually work? I'm guessing they wouldn't be running Windows if they were critical, but again, the DoD is paying Microsoft nearly a billion...for Windows 10 support. It's probably on more than a few
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Doesn't this make it in Microsoft's interest to introduce obscure, random (but ultimately harmless) annoyances into the DoD version of Win10 so they will maintain their tech support contract?
Even if their software was theoretically perfect there is still a huge amount of "support" to be had for such a product.
This is no more a conflict as any other product in the world that has a support package with is, which is basically most of them.
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https://www.penny-arcade.com/c... [penny-arcade.com]
Never ceases to be true, at least to me.
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sorry, but the "$" makes perfect sense in this case (we are talking about Corporate America here!)
He's probably too young to remember Compu$erve.
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>perfect
We're talking about Microsoft here...
--
BMO
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Hey, don't blame Americans for this one; you're being hypocritical. It's not only Americans who use Windows; the vast majority of computer users across the world use Windows. You all have yourselves to blame. You could all decide to stop using Windows, leaving only Americans to suffer with it, and switch yourselves to Linux, but you don't; except for a few isolated places like Munich, you all still use Windows and give your money to MS.
If you're a non-American (person, business, or government) and don't
A million dollar Pentagon contract isn't cool, ... (Score:2)
...you know what's cool? A billion dollar Pentagon contract!
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Compare same time periods (Score:2)
Close to a billion dollars in tech support so they can run an enterprise with a proposed budget of 580 billion dollars
You are not comparing equal time spans. Microsoft is NOT getting a billion dollars per year. It's a billion dollar total across the duration of the contract. That could be a decade or more. The $580B number is per year for the Defense Department budget.
Per TFA: "Microsoft has been awarded a non-competitive, firm-fixed price, single award, indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity contract for Microsoft Enterprise Technical Support Services,” the release stated on Tuesday. “The total cumulati
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Re:A million dollar Pentagon contract isn't cool, (Score:4, Informative)
...you know what's cool? A billion dollar Pentagon contract!
Being that it is a Pentagon contract, it will end up costing 10 billion.
"Do you want some fries and an F-35 with that . . . ?"
And which outsourced company gets MS's contract (Score:1)
to handle support for that now? MS is NOT going to do this, but WILL outsource. Let us not try to kid anybody, not in the Trump universe, where shit rolls fast and truth goes into the crapper!
No real alternatives.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly there are no real alternatives to Windows. OSX (if you're willing to pay the Apple tax) is terrible in a managed environment, and so is Linux. AD with Office+Exchange is quite unbeatable in terms of convenience. You can cobble together something in OSX/Linux just like you can use an Arduino as a PLC to run a manufacturing plant, but its going to be brittle.
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I would assert that this is the case as well. For massive numbers of Windows boxes, GPOs and policies are the best way out there to keep everything under control. Tools like SCCM and SCOM don't hurt either, especially when it comes to ensuring consistency of patches across large numbers of machines.
This isn't to say that CM tools like Puppet, Chef, et. al., don't have their place, but for desktops, the management tools available for Windows arguably suck the least.
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Scale (Score:3)
I think it is all about scale and management at that level.
I have no doubt moving a small to medium sized organization from MS to something else is possible.
However when you are talking about 4M deployments across a diverse usergroup you would have to think really hard about that decision.
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Personally, I know of no individual or organization who abandoned the MS world and ever went back. I can't find a single performance or financial metric in favor of MS over a Linux distro. I think it is 50 percent fear and 50 percent conformity that drives the MS market share, which likely explains why the DoD is so gung ho on MS junk.
Really? I know very VERY many individuals. The era of cheap Netbooks and their failures would be a great example of millions upon millions of people who bought Linux and then reverted to Windows.
On the organisation side of things you're right, but that's because IT departments are by-n-large actually competent enough to do a feasibility study on such a migration... unlike you who writes it off as fear and conformity despite the very clear case that Linux has little to no possibility to manage a truly large
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The Netbooks example can be attributed probably more to hardware than software.
Except for that niggling little statistic that the return rate of Linux netbooks was in the order of 80% and windows netbooks like 20%. Interesting given that Linux should have run faster.
but due to the MS licensing, if they had to replace a failed drive, they had to purchase a new MS license (again e-machines).
And yet that FUD also proved to be completely non-existent. Call the number, license renewed. This was the biggest non-event in MS's long history of events.
organizations were able to transition from Windows to something like Ubuntu with about as much disruption as moving from, say, Office 2003 to Office 2007
Sure. An organisation of a few people. If you think an organisation can transition from a larger DC + GP + Exchange solution to anything Linux "easily" then you're comp
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Yes, Exchange is the poster child of convenience, i don't know that many users or admins that really like it.
ROI (Score:1)
I hope someone is keeping track of my much money is spend on getting people running Windows 10 compared to other OSes.
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Nobody knows. I'm a fan of Linux and it has been my primary OS for decades but even I would say that supporting millions of Linux installations would be a nightmare. It used to be that if you knew what you were doing then Linux worked better than Windows on the desktop. Nowadays Linux is terrible for desktop because there is so much broken and poorly written software and drivers. Linux used to be way better 10 years ago.
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There are CM tools. In theory, one could use Puppet or Ansible with groups of desktops. However, in general, both of these tools are "push" methods which don't work well with mobile devices or computers, while GPOs tend to be pull based, so a client behind a number of NATs would still be able to work.
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As a Linux fan myself, I really wonder sometimes how things might be different if Gnome had never been made (Miguel de Icaza had been hit by a bus perhaps), and KDE had become the de facto standard Linux desktop UI instead.
I agree, Gnome sucks.
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I hope someone is keeping track of my much money is spend on getting people running Windows 10 compared to other OSes.
I'll bet Microsoft is keeping careful track of that.
Government Outsourcing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the amount of telemetry within Microsoft OS these days, I see this as more of an outsourcing move for that whole 'cause-terrorists-think-of-the-children requirement to help address negative publicity.
See, when the NSA spys on its own citizens and employees, it's viewed as evil and unconstitutional.
But when Microsoft does it, it's viewed as sales and marketing.
Gotta love how that shit works.
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I can buy a different computer. It's hard to buy a different NSA.
See the difference?
Retail VS Corporate (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure the corporate version is likely very configurable particularly when its a 1 Billion dollar contract with the DoD to not include any telemetry they don't see fit.
For the individual user sure, MS is going to do whatever MS is going to do.
I've seen over the years more configurable options for folks to lock down the MS environments within the corporate setting. I've seen some aspects so locked down that they more less break certain features in the name of security or ease of support or whatever.
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NSA just needs a product...
Ironically they don't want a secure one.
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When Krischev predicted America would sell the Soviets the rope they would hang us with, he was far too pessemistic.
Actually, it was Vladimir Lenin who said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." On the subject of ropes and hanging, Nikita Khrushchev said, "Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man." Also, learn to spell.
Tech Support? (Score:2)
That's a lot of money to tell someone "Please turn if off and back on again and we'll see if that fixes the problem."
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CLIPPY: "I see you are trying to launch a missile. Would you like help with that?"
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This is the Department of Defense. Do you work in industry? Check out DoD directives 8570 and 8140 for information. Support for the DoD need to be significantly more qualified than corporate drone tech support.
Build a bad, complex operating system... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't be the solution (Score:3)
... and then have people pay you lots of money to troubleshoot their issues.
There is an old saying in consulting that if you can't be a part of the solution then there is a lot of money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Microsoft Combat Systems technical support (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for calling Microsoft Advanced Combat Systems technical support
Please press 1 if you are in a combat situation other wise please hold for the next technician... ...hold music...
beep
Please in put your mission number...
beep boop beep booop beeep boop beep boop beep beeep boop boop beep boop beep
Mission verification complete we will now transfer you to a support technician...
Thank you for calling Microsoft Advanced Combat Systems technical support, may name is nahmeed how may I be helping you?
Look buddy my radar is froze up and I'm dodging a MIG 35 at the moment how about you fix this thing so I can take this sucker out.
I'm sorry to hear about that sir what Microsoft Advanced Combat System system are you calling about? ... its the radar in the f-35.
The radar!!
I understand sir but we have a lot of radar systems do you know the model number?
No!
Ok very good sir I can look that up. please hold ... ...more hold music...
Sir you still there ??
Yes I am I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to shake this MIG.
Thats fine sir, can you tell me what firmware revision of the radar you are using?
What?? I don't know all I know is that its stuck with the same blips thats been on the screen for the last 15 minutes and nothing has changed. Look just log in and fix it.
I would be happy to be helping you sir. Let me know when you have landed the plane and come to a full stop and all weapon systems are in their safe position.
Are you kidding me?? I can't land this plane right now this MIG will make mince meat of me once I stop evasive maneuvers!
Ah I see sir unfortunately I can not help you until the planes is at a full stop and all weapons are safe.
Is there any thing else I can be doing for you?
Yeah how about you.... BOOM*&@!*shzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzsssssssssssss
Sir hello are you there?
Hello sir??
Thank you for calling Microsoft Advanced Combat Systems technical support I hope you found this session helpful please reply to the survey at the end of this call. have a good day
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... Have you tried turning your plane off and on again?....
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... Failure to complete the survey will result in a $100k administrative fee being sent to your next of kin.
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Similar tech support interaction: Houston [xkcd.com]
Does this mean they'll be hiring Americans? (Score:2)
Until a tweet.... (Score:1)
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Oh dear. (Score:3)
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MS does have some nice things to offer to DoD... (Score:2)
With virtually every single company out there going head over heels for anything cloud related, one of the things MS brings to the table is a decent ironclad cloud offering. Server backups? DPM to an array, then to Azure. Desktops? DPM as well. AV? Endpoint Manager handles that fairly well.
Then, there is Windows 10 LTSB, and that can be something useful, as it will not be sprouting ads or new features come every 6-12 months.
Now, is this good or bad? Who is to day. However, MS seems to be able to ste
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Correction, "who is to say" is what was meant. Is MS perfect? No. However, they have gone from dinosaur to a company which moves and evolves fast. The fact that they are able to step in and handle the DoD's needs is a good example. I'm no MS fan, but I do give them credit for being able to do what needs done.
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In the past, I would have said the same thing. However, when I look at the market, I wonder, what would be the real solution that someone else can offer. The only company that even comes close to having the cloud data centers, a decent client OS, application support, and some sort of framework is Apple... and Apple appears to not give a rat's ass about anything enterprise anymore.
The ironic thing... I could see Apple nailing this contract if they had wanted to. It might have taken throwing up some FedRAM
Finally, that explains all the bugs... (Score:2)
...in Windows 10 that remain to this day...and in 8.1 and 7.
They used to save money (e.g., by offloading product testing off (to the unfortunate group called "Insiders.") Now they're getting paid nearly One Billion Dollars because their product is so buggy and insecure.
What a great scam the plutocrats at the top of Microsoft have created. Now, they've "MADOFF" with our tax money by providing services to their incomplete product to the U.S. Government.
This is why we, mere citizens, stand to lose Medicare u
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Oh, and Microsoft is, no doubt, waiting for the first "change order" (which they will have built into the contract), so they'll get More money in the future for things they left out of this initial proposal. That means ratcheting up the total $$$ volume of the contract for things that will magically become "essential" once the contract starts.
I wonder how much Drumpf gets out of this deal...
Great (Score:2)
This should be fun... (Score:2)
On one hand, we have the F-35, which would have to increase its reliability by about 300% just to be called a "trailer queen". Software problems they're admitting include, "shortfalls in electronic warfare, electronic attack, shortfalls in the performance of distributed aperture system and other issues that are classifiedâ. Who knows how bad the situation really is.
And now we're going to have Microsoft provide tech support for that (occasionally) flying bucket of pure fail?
The jokes just write themse
Big mistake (Score:2)
First order of business (Score:2)
Ambition, distraction, uglification and derision (Score:2)
But mostly, Win10 is uglification. Or putting it differently, if Windows were an Indiana Jones movie, then Windows 7 would star Harrison Ford; Windows 10 would star Legos.
Sigh (Score:2)
It's a sad day for defense. Unfortunately, the people who control the budgets have no clue when it comes to reliability, and mission readiness.
Or just use Linux.....? (Score:1)
Re: Or just use Linux.....? (Score:1)
Re: Or just use Linux.....? (Score:1)
For a BEELION dollars.... (Score:1)
..... Red Hat or SuSE would have come up with something a lot more secure.