U.S. Navy Makes $3 Billion “Hostage Payment” to HP for Crappy Computer Network
September 6th, 2010Via: Wired:
Normally, it’s hard to get anyone but the geeks fired up about information infrastructure. But the Navy Marine Corps Intranet isn’t your normal network. With 700,000+ seats, it’s the world’s second-biggest network, after the internet itself. NMCI’s technical complexities and hiccups are the stuff of dark legend around the Navy. The fights it’s sparked between the military and its main contractor, Electronic Data Systems (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), have been epic. And then there’s that contract; after paying out $10 billion, the Navy still doesn’t own a single router. So it’s giving HP another $3.3 billion dollars — a “hostage” payment, as one Department of the Navy civilian put it, mostly so the military can buy the gear and look at the network blueprints sailors and marines have used for a decade.
So maybe it’s not so surprising that our item on NMCI’s next phase triggered so many heated — and passionately smart — responses. In the comments section, we heard from sailors, from marines, from HP employees, and interested observers, too.
