The CIA wants to pay for software on demand instead of using long fixed licenses. This way they won't be quite as locked into a given product and will have a much easier time catching up with the state of the art.
An interesting note is it sounds like the CIA wants to host software internally (understandable) and pay for what they use by telling you how much they used.
There is no revolution here, unless you're in the business of providing software to the CIA. And even then, only your pay structure is changing.
Totally agree on the title, and revolution is a strong term outside of the immediate sphere of affected vendors.. but consider that sphere, and how many businesses operate with giant enterprise licensing agreements.
I think it might be a bigger deal than you think. It's not just pay structure, it's the fact that the sales cycle, and jobs that would be at stake if someone admitted purchasing multi-million dollar bullshit encourages companies to hire great sales teams, sell crap product, and refuse to innovate.
I'd love to see this take hold and infect other agencies that rely on my tax dollars for ridiculous DOORS licenses, etc.
The other thing I want to add, is most companies make their money from this type of long drawn out licensing cycle. They lose money on the build, but the long period of which they "maintain" is what make the most money.
Its even at the point where Govt contractors don't understand how to charge for what the CIA proposes. Its good for the tax payer, bad for the big govt contractors and hopefully will save the govt large amounts of money.
I am happy to see it as a tax payer even though I work for one of the large govt contractors. I wouldn't consider it link bait. It is a revolution in the idea that contractors won't know how to deal with this.
Totally! And the funny thing is that it's something of a cultural food chain. The next-biggest entities that likely suffer from this are the sorts of companies (the Boeings, HPs, Lockheads, Oracles...) that are selling these agencies the goods (because they buy lots of their software this way as well). I'd be thrilled to see it trickle down and change the way a lot of these projects are bought-and-paid-for.
That said? It's nerve-wracking. My (barely educated) impression is that lot of these projects are something like selling a multi-million dollar project that hasn't been built yet to the organizational equivalent of the cat-lady from the Simpsons. Attaching what are essentially performance-weighted payment structures to it (we'll pay you when/if we use it) sounds risky. Even if you think you're capable of building a solid product, you're success at this point also depends largely on the client's ability to predict and specify their actual needs.
I'm in the weeds, but my point is that I wonder if the CIA might find bidders for these projects turn shy.
An interesting note is it sounds like the CIA wants to host software internally (understandable) and pay for what they use by telling you how much they used.
Isn't that how most larger IT departments already work?
I remember at one job in the past, we would take a regular survey of Microsoft license usage on the network for reporting to said Microsoft.
This is just one agency but I think they are thinking twice about spending 10m on a product and getting locked in because it was sold as the be-all end-all. Big vendors like Palantir, and the database vendors mentioned will pay attention.
If any VC's out there are interested in (a) packaging multi-vendor packages of software services; (b) selling them to interested companies/organizations like the CIA; (c) helping those customers keep track of their departmental consumption for payment; (d) making sure those payments get to the integrators/original-software-vendors; (e) perhaps even letting "customers" also be "distributors" (infinite hierarchies of resale); (f) >>> paying Hitachi Data Systems licensing fees on patents <<<; (g) >>> having me be the CTO <<< ... then I have the complete I.P. understanding and good tech expertise to put together this solution. There are some technical challenges but these are surmountable.
Here are patents applied for in 2001 that now have been granted related to all aspects of software licensing, distribution, hierarchical apportioning of proceeds, etc. (see Google links after patents list). Note that I did primary patent disclosures to the I.P. lawyer who filed the patents on behalf of the small company later acquired by Hitachi. Anyone doing work in this area is going to step on the claims of these patents. Patents (dang, I just realized these are still in "patent application phase" form but they've been referenced by the likes of Oracle, Microsoft, AT&T, BMC, etc. -- Google's patent search didn't used to return patent applications, I don't think, ... anyway ...):
* US 2003/0084000 A1
* US 2003/0084060 A1
* US 2003/0084145 A1
* US 2003/0083994 A1
* US 2003/0084341 A1
* US 2003/0083892 A1
* US 2003/0083999 A1
* US 2003/0083998 A1
* US 2003/0083995 A1
* US 2003/0084343 A1
For a further clarification of a "multi-vendor" scenario, here's a hypothetical situation:
- an integrator knows the CIA, FBI, and successor to the KGB all need secure software services
- the integrator convinces two secure data centers, one in Reston, VA, and the other in Moscow, to host equivalent infrastructures
- the integrator puts together a suite of services consisting of: Oracle DB (backend store for some services); Microsoft SQL Server (backend store for others); AT&T network connectivity to/from Reston data center; Russian network connectivity to/from Moscow data center; SharePoint document repository; Microsoft Office suite of tools; document-management vendor software managing search, archival, secure role-based access to documents, automatic purging of documents after a given time where applicable; EMC networked storage; image-processing tools with plugin architecture; automated image-processing software from several small specialized shops to recognize military equipment, buildings, insurgent hideouts, etc.; bla bla bla bla
- the integrator puts in measuring tools everywhere to gather usage data: data transmission; storage used; DB activity; #-of-important-items-recognized-during-image-processing-runs; #-of-users-in-system-X; #-of-document-views; etc.
- the integrator applies billing policies for the entire stack, perhaps on a different basis per customer (e.g., CIA/FBI get large-volume discount price list; Syria's secret service gets small-fry high-cost pricing)
- large organizations will likely have (a) a central consulting group acting as a distributor to other departments (along with payments to integrator and income from other departments); (b) other departments that will buy from central consulting organization
- at the end of every month, each department/organization/consultant/integrator either: (a) gets income from their customers and downstream distributors; (b) pays someone upstream for their usage; or (c) both pays and gets some income
- in this case, the integrator (a) pays out to Oracle, Microsoft, EMC, data centers, etc., all on a per-use basis (of course, a flat monthly fee for any particular item is also "per-use" of a month); (b) receives incomes from its direct customers
- given adequate security the actors in this scheme need not ever know directly who their upstream or downstream is beyond a single level
I'm guessing that that's the reporter's fault. The quote seems to referring to AWS, which they've probably never heard of, leading them to make a uninformed guess as to its meaning. Just another case of general media reporters covering stories they're not qualified for.
If you guys mean this quote, thank you for allowing my brain to calm down because for about a minute I thought I was going completely insane in being unable to parse what was being written.
| "Think Amazon," he said, referring to the electronic commerce giant where the inventory is vast but the billing is per item. "That model really works."
The CIA wants to pay for software on demand instead of using long fixed licenses. This way they won't be quite as locked into a given product and will have a much easier time catching up with the state of the art.
An interesting note is it sounds like the CIA wants to host software internally (understandable) and pay for what they use by telling you how much they used.
There is no revolution here, unless you're in the business of providing software to the CIA. And even then, only your pay structure is changing.