Tag: contract

Categories
Politics

Microsoft challenges NSA cloud contract reportedly awarded to Amazon

Microsoft challenges NSA cloud contract reportedly awarded to Amazon

President Donald Trump speaks on Jan.

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Microsoft has filed a protest against the National Security Agency at the Government Accountability Office and challenged the award of a cloud computing contract.

The protest filed on July 21 is intended to challenge the NSA’s decision to award the $ 10 billion contract to Amazon, the journals Nextgov and Washington Technology reported on Tuesday.

The NSA deal with Amazon follows the Pentagon’s decision to terminate its $ 10 billion cloud contract known as JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The JEDI deal, embroiled in a lengthy legal battle between tech giants Amazon and Microsoft, had become one of the most tangled contracts for the Pentagon.

The NSA contract, which is also up to 10 billion US dollars, is code-named “WildandStormy” and is intended to modernize the agency’s secret data storage, reported Nextgov.

In a statement to CNBC, a spokesman for the NSA said the agency “recently placed a contract for cloud computing services” and declined to elaborate on the matter.

“The unsuccessful provider has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The agency will respond to the protest in accordance with applicable federal regulations,” added the spokesman.

A Microsoft spokesman told CNBC in a statement: “Based on the decision, we are filing an administrative protest through the Government Accountability Office. We exercise our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly. “

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing unit, referred questions to the NSA.

The lucrative JEDI cloud contract was intended to modernize the IT operations of the Pentagon for services provided for up to 10 years. Microsoft received the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating the market leader AWS.

A month later, AWS filed a lawsuit in the US Federal Court to protest the JEDI decision.

The company argued that former President Donald Trump was biased against Amazon, and that its then CEO Jeff Bezos lobbied the Pentagon to give the contract to Microsoft.

Last year the Pentagon inspector general released a report that the award did not appear to have been influenced by the White House.

However, the Inspector General noted in the 313-page report released in April 2020 that he had limited cooperation with White House officials throughout his review and was therefore unable to complete his assessment of the ethical misconduct allegations.

A Pentagon official said on a call with reporters that the litigation itself is not necessarily the main reason for the change in approach. Given that the landscape had changed in the meantime, the agency found that their needs had changed too.

– CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Lauren Feiner contributed to this article.

WATCH: Department of Defense Chief Information Officer on the decision to terminate the JEDI program

Categories
Politics

Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract

Pentagon cancels $10 billion JEDI cloud contract

The Department of Defense announced Tuesday that it is canceling the $ 10 billion cloud contract that has been the subject of a legal battle between Amazon and Microsoft. But it is also announcing a new contract and soliciting suggestions from both cloud service providers, where both will likely get a reward.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) deal has become one of the most tangled contracts for the Department of Defense. In a press release on Tuesday, the Pentagon said that “the JEDI cloud contract no longer meets its requirements due to evolving requirements, increased cloud capabilities and advances in the industry.”

Microsoft stocks lost about 0.4% after the news and Amazon stocks rose 3.5% after hitting a 52-week high.

The battle for a cloud computing project doesn’t seem to be over yet. The Pentagon said in the press release that it continues to need enterprise-level cloud capabilities and announced a new multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability.

The agency said it plans to seek proposals for the contract from both Amazon and Microsoft, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet their needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could meet its specifications as well.

The lucrative JEDI contract was intended to modernize the IT operations of the Pentagon for services provided for up to 10 years. Microsoft received the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating the market leader Amazon Web Services.

A month later, Amazon’s cloud computing unit filed a lawsuit in the US federal court to protest the JEDI decision.

The company argued that President Donald Trump’s bias towards Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos influenced the Pentagon to hand over the contract to Microsoft.

Last year the Pentagon Inspector General released a report that the award did not appear to have been influenced by the White House.

However, the Inspector General noted in the 313-page report released in April 2020 that he had had limited cooperation with White House officials throughout his review and was therefore unable to complete his assessment of the ethical misconduct allegations.

Microsoft said in a blog post it understood the Pentagon’s decision to terminate the JEDI contract, but said the litigation over it was a need for reform.

“The 20 months since the DoD selected Microsoft as a JEDI partner highlight issues that deserve policymakers’ attention: If a company can postpone critical technology upgrades for those who defend our nation for years, the protest process must reformed, “said Toni Townes-Whitley, president of US Regulated Industries at Microsoft, wrote.

Townes-Whitley added that the DoD’s decision “does nothing to change the fact that, after careful review by professional procurement personnel, the DoD decided that Microsoft and our technology best met their needs, not just once, but twice. The Inspector General’s finding that there has been no evidence of interference in the procurement process and does not change the fact that the DoD and other federal agencies – large corporations, in fact, around the world – select Microsoft to meet their cloud computing and digital transformation needs on a regular basis. “

Amazon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

A Pentagon official said on a call with reporters that the litigation itself is not necessarily the main reason for the change in approach. But since the landscape has changed in the meantime, the agency found that their needs had changed.

“Mission needs were our primary reason for doing this,” said John Sherman, DoD deputy chief information officer.

The DoD said that for the new contract, its cloud provider must meet several criteria, such as working at all three classification levels (i.e. unclassified, secret or top secret), available worldwide, and having top-notch cybersecurity controls.

The agency said it expects the contract to be worth billions, although it is still setting the maximum. The contract should last up to five years, including a three-year performance base period and two one-year option periods.

The Pentagon expects the JWCC “to be a bridge to our longer-term approach,” said Sherman. He said the department expects to see the direct rewards from the contract around April 2022 and open wider competition as early as 2025.

This story will be updated. Check back for updates.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

WATCH: How Amazon Web Services is moving massive amounts of data to the cloud

Categories
Business

Workhorse Inventory Plunges After Dropping USPS Contract

Workhorse Stock Plunges After Losing USPS Contract

Workhorse, a start-up that aims to become a major electric vehicle maker, received bad news Tuesday: it lost a $ 482 million deal to make tens of thousands of vehicles for the United States Postal Service . And now investors are punishing his stocks.

The company’s shares fell nearly 50 percent on Tuesday following the postal service’s announcement and fell another 10 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

Workhorse, an Ohio-based company with a factory in Indiana, relied on the postal contract to drive sales. By early February, stocks had gone from under $ 2 to over $ 40 in less than a year, mostly in hopes of winning all or part of the postal deal. Instead, the Postal Service outsourced the work to Oshkosh Defense, a subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation in Wisconsin that makes military vehicles and mobility systems.

As part of an initial contract for what the postal service calls the next generation delivery vehicle, Oshkosh will complete the design and then assemble 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over a 10-year period.

Oshkosh vehicles will be fitted with either fuel-efficient gasoline engines or electric batteries and will be upgraded to keep up with advances in electric vehicle technology, the postal service said. Workhorse suggested delivering an all-electric contract.

The Workhorse Group, which employs approximately 130 people and had sales of less than $ 1 million for the first nine months of last year, was for the Goliath of Oshkosh, which had corporate sales of $ 8.4 billion in fiscal 2019 , a David.

On Wednesday, Workhorse said in a statement that it “has asked the postal service for more information in accordance with the rules of the tender process” and that it “intends to explore all the options available to an unsuccessful finalist in a state tender process”.

Categories
Business

Workhorse Group drops almost 50% after EV firm is handed over for USPS contract

Workhorse Group drops nearly 50% after EV company is passed over for USPS contract

Workhorse W-15 electric pickup.

Source: workhorse

Workhorse Group’s shares fell more than 50% Tuesday after the company was turned over for a key U.S. Postal Service contract.

Amid the heightened volatility, the stock halted multiple times in the last half hour of trading before finally ending the session with a 47.5% loss. In extended trading, the stock fell another 10%.

The US Postal Service awarded Oshkosh Defense the first part of its 10-year multi-billion dollar contract to modernize its fleet of postal delivery vehicles. The initial investment will be $ 482 million.

Workhorse makes electric vehicles that focus on last mile delivery. The company currently has partnerships with UPS and FedEx Express, among others.

The contract award decision for the US Postal Service was made after a series of delays over several years. The deal was seen by the street as an upward catalyst for the Workhorse Group ahead of sales.

In a recent announcement to customers, BTIG said that Workhorse’s securing of part of the USPS contract was part of the company’s base case. The company has a Buy recommendation for the stock.

Though the stock almost halved on Tuesday, stocks are still up 347% over the past year.

Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis as well as live business day programs from around the world.

Categories
Health

Know-how Govt Apologizes After Dozens of Occasion Attendees Contract Covid-19

Technology Executive Apologizes After Dozens of Event Attendees Contract Covid-19

A technology executive in California apologized for hosting a conference in Culver City. After that, two dozen participants and employees of the event tested positive for the coronavirus.

The managing director, Peter H. Diamandis, was one of those who had contracted the coronavirus. In late January, he hosted the conference – an annual summit for a paid membership group called Abundance 360 ​​- with around 80 attendees, panelists, and support staff.

The gathering disregarded instructions from Los Angeles County public health officials who repeatedly urged people to avoid excessive travel or public mixing. At the time of the conference, southern California was experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases and many hospitals were still overwhelmed.

Mr Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit group that awards cash prizes for technological innovation, said in a blog post on Friday that he was “deeply sorry”. He added that the safety protocols for the event – including repeated Covid-19 tests for attendees, none of whom showed positive results at the time – had created a false sense of security, leading people to become less vigilant about masks and distancing were.

“I was wrong,” Diamandis said, adding that masks, physical distancing and vaccines are the best ways to fight the virus. “I hope others can learn from my mistakes.”

According to Diamandis, hundreds of people attended the conference virtually, and some asked if they could attend physically. The X-Prize office in Culver City, bordering Los Angeles, has been converted into a studio, and Mr Diamandis’ Instagram posts reveal he shares a brightly lit stage with panelists, some on video calls and others in person.

Mr Diamandis said those who attended the event had been asked to share negative test results for the coronavirus before arriving and that workers and attendees were repeatedly tested at the event, giving more than 450 negative results.

“I trusted that an immunity bubble was a ‘real thing’,” said Diamandis.

But two days after the studio production ended, an employee tested positive. He sent emails informing attendees, asking them to isolate and retest.

On Friday he wrote that at least 24 people were infected. MIT Technology Review, which reported on the meeting last week, found that at least 32 people associated with the conference may have been infected.

General membership to Abundance 360 ​​costs $ 12,500 annually, according to the organization’s online materials. According to MIT Technology Review, attendees at the January event each paid more than $ 30,000. When the conference began on January 23, California had a strict home-stay order. it was picked up two days later.

Updated

Apr. 16, 2021, 5:26 p.m. ET

On Tuesday, state and county health officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether Mr Diamandis could be fined or otherwise disciplined.

Representatives for Mr Diamandis, who has a degree in medicine from Harvard Medical School and whose entrepreneurial ventures include a coronavirus vaccine development company and a competition to improve Covid-19 testing technology, did not immediately respond to inquiries after Tuesday Comments.

Many people see a negative coronavirus test as a permit to socialize without precaution, but doctors and scientists say it is dangerously wrong.

Some types of tests, especially those that give quick results, do not reliably detect low levels of the virus and can falsely label infected people as “negative”. And even the best tests cannot see into the future: people can become infected with the coronavirus after a negative test result.

According to Diamandis, participants took part in PCR tests, which are molecular tests performed using a technique called a polymerase chain reaction. These tests are considered to be relatively reliable, but they are not perfect. (Antigen tests, which are designed to detect pieces of coronavirus protein rather than their genetic material, tend to give faster results than molecular tests, but they are more difficult to identify coronavirus cases.)

According to Diamandis, the PCR tests created a false sense of security. “We didn’t make it compulsory to wear masks 100 percent of the time in the studio,” he said. “This is definitely one of my biggest mistakes and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned.”

These lessons – particularly about relying too much on test results – hit Mr. Diamandis after he became ill himself.

“When it became clear that I had personally got Covid-19 (which sucks as everyone says), I tested myself twice a day with fast PCR and fast antigen for several consecutive days,” he wrote his blog post. “I was amazed that NONE of the tests were positive.”

Four days after his quarantine, a PCR spit test finally discovered the virus, Diamandis said.

He also noted that a group of people at the Culver City event – the 35 audiovisual experts who ran the live broadcast – wore masks throughout the production process and did not report positive test results.

“There were no COVID cases in this group,” wrote Diamandis. “Conclusion again: masks work.”

Categories
Business

EU piles stress on AstraZeneca over delayed vaccines, reveals particulars of contract

EU piles pressure on AstraZeneca over delayed vaccines, reveals details of contract

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will give a lecture at the end of a video conference of the members of the European Council that dealt with the Covid 19 pandemic in Brussels on January 21, 2021.

OLIVIER HOSLET | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – The European Union released an edited version of the contract it signed with AstraZeneca on Friday as the bloc put pressure on the drug maker to deliver the promised Covid vaccine shipments.

The EU, which has been criticized for its slow adoption of vaccinations, was hit with a blow by AstraZeneca last week when the company said it could only deliver a fraction of the shots it agreed to for the first quarter.

AstraZeneca has denied it failed to deliver on its commitments, stating that shipments to the 27-nation bloc were targets rather than promises. The company also cited production problems at its European plants for the delays.

The European Commission, the EU executive, welcomed AstraZeneca’s commitment to greater transparency after the company agreed to publish details of the agreement. AstraZeneca was not immediately available to leave comments when CNBC contacted them.

The contract, which was signed on August 27, provides for AstraZeneca to undertake to the best of its ability to build capacity to produce 300 million doses of vaccine, with the Commission having the option to order an additional 100 million doses.

In the case of AstraZeneca, the agreement defines “best effort” as the activities a company with similar resources would undertake in the development and manufacture of its vaccine.

This includes “bearing in mind the urgent need for a vaccine to end a global pandemic that is creating serious public health problems, restrictions on personal freedoms and economic impacts around the world, but considering its effectiveness and safety”.

The contract states that AstraZeneca will use its “best possible efforts” to manufacture the vaccine at manufacturing facilities in the EU. The deal also provides for this to include plants based in the UK, although the country left the bloc last year.

AstraZeneca has been told to send some of the UK-made cans to the block, but the company said a separate deal with the UK prevented that.

The European Medicines Agency is expected to make a decision on Friday on whether the AstraZeneca vaccine will actually be approved for use.

International Competition Concerns

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Friday morning on German radio: “There are binding orders and the contract is crystal clear.”

“AstraZeneca also explicitly assured us in this contract that no other obligations would prevent the fulfillment of the contract,” she said, according to Reuters.

Von der Leyen of the EU claimed the deal included clear delivery amounts for December and the first three quarters of 2021.

Earlier this week, Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, said the EU contract was based on what is known as a “best effort” clause and did not officially oblige the drug maker to a specific delivery schedule.

The EU von der Leyen rejected this proposal on Friday, adding that the clause would only apply if it was unclear whether AstraZeneca could develop a safe and effective vaccine. She also claimed that the contract specifically mentioned four manufacturing facilities that would supply the vaccine to Europe, two of which are in the UK.

A look at the headquarters of the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca as a Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and inspected in Brussels, Belgium on January 28, 2021.

Dursun Aydemir | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

EU officials have indicated that deliveries from the UK to Europe could be rerouted if delays in European production persist.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he remained “confident” of delivering the AstraZeneca vaccine developed in partnership with Oxford University. Johnson added that he was “very pleased” that the country was among the fastest in Europe to introduce the vaccine.

The UK has the second highest number of confirmed Covid cases in Europe after Russia, recording the highest number of coronavirus-related deaths of any European nation and the fifth highest worldwide.

The EU of around 450 million people is struggling to get its vaccinations up and running as it is insufficiently supplied and is currently lagging far behind countries like Israel and the UK in delivering vaccines to its citizens.

Vaccine maker Pfizer-BioNTech initially delivered a blow, announcing it would temporarily cut production to improve its production capacity in Belgium. This was followed by AstraZeneca last Friday, which reduced its delivery estimates for the region.

An unnamed senior EU official told Reuters that the bloc expected about 80 million doses by March but had been told it would only receive 31 million doses instead. The company has not confirmed the quantities concerned.

A deepening dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca has raised concerns about international competition for limited vaccine supplies. Hopefully the vaccinations can help end the coronavirus pandemic.

– CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.