It’s not just the amount of money but where that money is going is a problem. You see this issue with procurement all the time if it’s a non standard channel you’ll encounter difficulties.

I would guess that the customer paying HPE directly to fix this wouldn’t be an issue but good luck explaining what a bounty is to procurement and with all the restrictions that come with government tenders it’s even more complicated as you have no idea who is the end beneficiary of that payment is so all the due diligence you have to do can’t be done or is far more difficult.

You also don’t get the usual contractural provisions that provide guarantees and protections for what you purchase this way.

I recall buying $50-60k worth of hardware at one of my previous employers, with only 2 signatures required, both of which I was able to obtain within the space of an afternoon.

I worked on a product where certain capabilities were implemented as required but there was no requirement to display the information to the customer. We had our own internal displays that we could use to view the information. The customer saw our displays one day and wanted them too. We were not allowed to give it to them.

You guessed it- government contract. Support the warfighter my ass.

All the money in the world but these things still take time. Unnecessarily, but still.

For timescales of ~6mths (depending on where you are in the year) yes, for right now outside our budget... possibly not.