The founder of a local search site “Burrp!”, Deap Ubhi is a
lesser known entrepreneur.
He joined Amazon in 2014 and motivated start-ups and other
organizations to embrace cloud computing products.
He in less than a couple of years left, on a journey to
start a company that furnished technology to restaurants.
Later on, he joined a Pentagon effort to employ techies. He
wished to make a super effective search engine and according to what he said,
also to help American people.
But as it turns out, Ubhi’s part in the Pentagon has landed
him right in midst of one of the most prominent federal IT contracts.
A $10 billion deal of getting cloud computing to Pentagon, attracted
the top tech companies when the project was announced in 2017.
Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Google, all wanted to
seal the deal in their own ways.
But there was a catch to it all; the contract would go to
only ‘one’ cloud vendor. And Amazon happened to close the deal with the
capability of fulfilling Pentagon’s demands.
This is where Ubhi came in, especially his ties with Amazon,
a place where he now works again.
Oracle, who under no circumstances could have landed the
deal, vehemently criticized the one-vendor attitude.
The organization is now fighting in a federal court about
Ubhi’s alleged inclination towards Amazon and its effect on the said deal.
Before the suit was filed, Pentagon had no found no
suspicious influence of Ubhi and hence kept evaluating the deal despite Oracle’s
lawsuit.
Further on, more information about Ubhi was discovered and
Pentagon declined a request for disclosing it.
The winner of the deal was to be announced in April. When contacted
by Amazon, both Ubhi and Pentagon refused to comment.
Oracle didn’t comment on the issue outside the court but
during the proceedings it mentioned Ubhi’s outspoken inclination towards Amazon
by providing the proof of a tweet via Ubhi’s handle.
According to the White house press secretary, the president
of the US is not a part of this war of the vendors.
President Trump has never been involved in a government
contract before so if he as much as even points at something regarding this
situation it would be a first.
The cloud contract is being overseen by a Defense Department
Procurement Official, commonly known as the Joint Enterprise Defense
Infrastructure (JEDI).
The detection of the officials who’s actually chose the
winner has not been made yet.
The Pentagon’s transition to cloud computing is being seen
to by a team directed by the chief information officer, Dana Deasy.
Cloud computing would contribute a lot in the battlefield
and hence the American government is keen on giving the contract to the best.
Reportedly, for some time Ubhi worked on a market research
for JEDI while he was working at Pentagon.
Oracle in the court cited the internal documents where Ubhi
articulated support towards a single cloud approach.
Oracle also thinks Ubhi had something to do with the decision
to select a single cloud provider.
In return, Amazon said that Ubhi worked on JEDI only for
seven weeks that too at the early stages and that there were over 70 people
involved in the development.
Amazon and Ubhi’s ‘Tablehero’ were to engage in a
partnership of which there is no proof as yet. Ubhi hasn’t been replying to the
emails of investors either.
Pentagon mentioned that the single cloud would let the
movement be faster and ensure more security. This statement was later asserted
by the Government Accountability Office.
Both IBM and oracle filed heavy protests against the
Government accountability Office which was later denied in Oracle’s case and
rejected for IBM.
Oracle, which has a small cloud market shares, then took the
issue to the federal courts of the US.
The Oracle lawsuit stands to profit Microsoft as it now has
improved capabilities and hence could be a strong competitor to Amazon.
It doesn’t matter whether Ubhi molded the contract. Pentagon’s
justifications support its decision to use a single cloud approach.
The major motivation behind the decision has always been helping
the defense make better data driven decisions.