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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

For something on the scale of the DOD, it makes very little sense to operate in the cloud, I am still unsure why this is a goal for them, particularly considering both the cost and the security concerns.

But single-sourcing your cloud destroys any remaining value proposition: If you become dependent on a single cloud provider's services, they can charge you as much as they want once the current contract is up, and your lock-in means you're going to end up paying it. (Or we all are, since it's the DOD and we pay taxes.) The ten billion dollar contract is nice to have now, but I'm sure Microsoft and Amazon are both really licking their lips for the forty billion dollar renewal ten years later.

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When you're signing contracts at DoD scale, typically you negotiate a "vendor can only increase prices X amount per year" clause.

Companies that get screwed are those who aren't big enough to negotiate that kind of deal up front.

But no, a Top 50 or large government type contract is never going to be at the mercy of unexpected price hikes.

They will, though, be at a disadvantage in pace of new features, hardware refresh, etc. The gov version will lag far behind the general offering. It's also possible the general offering will go down in relative pricing, like cost/mb or same price, but faster CPU.

The value prop is the same for them as it is for any other company choosing a single cloud: it unlocks a ton of services and basic building blocks which empowers and speeds up software development, as well as providing fundamental stuff like access control and auditing.

The concern over vendor lock-in and pricing is one that gets thrown around often, but doesn't really make sense to me. When has Amazon, Microsoft, et al gouged one of their larger customers in the past? Why would they do that when it would destroy their reputation and scare away business?

A large customer working with a large company is like any other negotiation, both have leverage and there isn't any feasible scenario where Amazon or Microsoft go completely crazy and start gouging their customers for some short-term gain.

There's nothing "short-term" about having the entire Department of Defense locked to your services. Our government still runs systems from decades ago.

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