SEC violated procurement law by purchasing Apple equipment
The Washington Post reports that the SEC violated procurement law when it purchased almost US$1 million in computer equipment from Apple in 2008. In a report released last week, the SEC's inspector general said that after the purchase the computer equipment "immediately failed" to work as intended. The report says that the SEC violated federal regulations when it told Apple its budget for one of the orders and failed to seek out any further competitive bids.
The SEC was seeking to purchase updated equipment in order to help meet its expanded duties in regulating the financial industry. Prior to the purchase, the SEC was still relying on old tape reels to store and back up data. The report also accuses Apple of wrongdoing. It says Apple used the known budget the SEC had (originally $200,000) and tailored the order around that. However, Apple left out "essential equipment that the SEC was subsequently forced to purchase," according to the report. That essential equipment cost the SEC another $773,000. The SEC said that "appropriate action was taken" against the employee responsible for the purchase. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet declined to issue a comment on the matter to The Washington Post.
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The Washington Post reports that the SEC violated procurement law when it purchased almost US$1 million in computer equipment from Apple...
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The feds at that time - 2008 - hadn't approved Macs for purchase at about any level. Therefore the equipment "immediately failed" because they were Mac, not because they didn't boot. This makes them "inappropriate equipment." I'd imagine the other 3/4 of a million was to buy or have built interfaces between the Macs and the 9 track tape drives.
Despite the person being a Mac fan, s/he should have just bought or leased the appropriate IBM equipment and done business as usual.
Well, will have to add this Apple purchase to the other SEC great mistakes: Madoff and Allan Stanford.
Silly Republicans... It was THEIR PARTY that hosted this mess in the first place!!! Let's see 2008 was the glory days of a lame duck Cheney-Bush White House. Republicans were still rooting in the aisles over how well the free market was doing.
The company looks legit.
Cloverleaf iSN: Intelligent Storage Networking for the Global Storage Community
From their own page, they're privately owned, used by Defense contractors for consolidating data from multiple vendors. Are your sides splitting from laughter yet??
No actual IT powerhouse does this work THEMSELVES. My company is going through SAP and the implementor tools are ALL expensive packages from third parties that promise "the world" but GUARANTEE NOTHING except empty wallets... It's a whole underbelly.. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft.. All run you through these type of "partners" they won't assemble, install, configure their OWN STUFF.. but they make pretty Superbowl ads.
The poor schmuck was thrown under the bus.. The Apple equipment was "invalided" before it was assembled and configured... IT saw Apple logos and freaked out...
I'm guessing that the product was xServer with XSan. I've seen my IT department use IBM and HP SAN products and I can't say those really live up to TV on that budget either. I can't see Apple's version as any worse and it's designed to use other storage solutions... Not gimped when you're mixing parts from companies.
This is like a TEXTBOOK bad IT Project right out of Project Management class.
Oh please. This has nothing to do with the parties. This is minions level. Bush was a very untech president. This is typical bad management by those in govt we don't elect.
May 28 2011 at 9:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis is sad. This SEC can investigate itself very well, but it fails to actually do something about, oh, I don't know,… It's job!
May 28 2011 at 12:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhere is the SOX documentation? How did one manager spend that kind of money without filling out design specs and getting approvals?
This is pretty shallow on meaningful details other than Apple. You know how many managers throw MILLIONS to Microsoft and IBM partners for equipment that doesnt live up iin the same manner... It's "industry standard".
Agreed. Details are sorely lacking and as such this article smells. It is either a complete lie or was "leaked" to make Apple look bad. Details would have allowed the truth to be determined and the story debunked, which is why they were omitted.
May 29 2011 at 11:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWow, it's 2008 and the SEC was prior to the purchase, ....still relying on old tape reels to store and back up data.
May 28 2011 at 12:45 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyTape reels are dependable technology -- tape drives are still often used today for archival purposes, long-term backup, and other situations where immediate access isn't necessary -- and depending on how old the computers themselves are, they may not have had many options.
May 28 2011 at 12:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyGood point, it just sounded funny and kind of took me back in time when I was putting cassette tapes into a player of sorts to load games and programs into the comptuer.
May 28 2011 at 1:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhen does the govt.'s math ever add up?
1. Oh ok, so a company sold u guys a million dollars worth of equipment that u didn't need... And the sale went through 1 person?!
And 2. Those free iPod touches for everyone in the office wasn't a bonus buddy... Pay up!
.
Your synopsis is incorrect. The equipment was needed. Otherwise it could not have failed to "work as intended."
May 29 2011 at 11:35 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWait, so Apple is in the "wrong doing" for tailoring to all of the SEC's requests and needs... This makes almost no sense.
May 28 2011 at 12:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe wrong doing isn't in the tailoring but in the leaving out "essential equipment" in the package. Whether it was "Doesn't everybody have that stuff?", "Duh, anybody knows you need to buy that", or "Well, they won't be able to just return all this stuff to the local Apple Store, so maybe they'll buy this other stuff as well; ka-ching!" isn't possible to tell from the article.
May 28 2011 at 12:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe question becomes how much information Apple had about the needs or not. If they had full details about exactly what was needed and left stuff out then it is Apple's fault.
I have a feeling they didn't. Or they presented the detail that they could fill that order for the budget and the same employees that approved the order without looking further just bought what they could afford, figuring they could make it work
Heh, what?
Something isn't adding up here. Mainly, how you could possibly purchase ~$200K in equipment but somehow forget about ~$773K in "other stuff"?
Three cinema displays for each Mac Mini?
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