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Subject: [ISN] HP Holds Navy Network 'Hostage' for $3.3 Billion
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews ! org>
Date: 2010-08-31 8:37:36
Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.61.1008310337280.19926 () conundrum ! infosecnews ! org
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/hp-holds-navy-network-hostage/
By Noah Shachtman
Danger Room
Wired.com
August 31, 2010
Someday, somehow, the U.S. Navy would like to run its networks -- maybe
even own its computers again. After 10 years and nearly $10 billion,
many sailors are tired of leasing their PCs, and relying on a private
contractor to operate most of their data systems. Troops are sick of
getting stuck with inboxes that hold 150 times less than a Gmail
account, and local networks that go down for days while Microsoft Office
2007 gets installed ... in 2010. But the Navy just can't quit its
tangled relationship with Hewlett-Packard. The admirals and the firm
recently signed another $3.3 billion no-bid contract that begins Oct.
1st. It's a final, five-year deal, both sides promise, to let the Navy
gently wean itself from its reliance on HP. But that's what they said
the last time, and the time before that.
It's become a Washington cliché that the military and the intelligence
community rely too much on outside contractors. Everyone from President
Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised to cut back on
Pentagon outsourcing. But the Navy's ongoing inability to separate
itself from Hewlett-Packard -- after years of trying -- shows how
difficult that withdrawal is going to be.
Just to make sure its core networks keep running -- to make sure marines
and sailors can keep e-mailing each other on Oct. 1st -- the Navy is
paying Hewlett Packard $1.788 billion. (Booz Allen Hamilton, another
outside contractor, handled the negotiations with Hewlett-Packard for
the military.) The service will spend another $1.6 billion to buy from
HP the equipment troops have worked on for years, and to license the
network diagrams and configuration documents, so that the Navy can begin
to plan for a future in which they're not utterly reliant on HP for
their most basic communications. In essence, the Navy is paying to look
at the blueprints to the network it has been using for a decade.
"HP is holding the Navy hostage, and there isn't a peep about it," one
Department of the Navy civilian tells Danger Room. "We basically had two
recourses: pay, or send in the Marines."
[...]
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