“We would have done this” for a fraction of the price, “and it would have been working perfectly,” Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Bay Area global cloud provider Salesforce.com, said in an interview. “But we were turned away.”…

Kundra has pushed for changes that would allow tech companies into the relatively closed circle of federal contractors. But few have listened, Benioff said.

“Washington is very hard to work with as a tech company,” he added. “Their procurement process doesn’t work well in emergency situations like this.”…

“The skill that is needed most for someone to come in is the knowledge of how the system works,” said Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley startup founder and creator of the popular “Lean Startup” philosophy. “Even if you got Google up to speed on the crazy architecture that makes no sense, … it’s like if you have a pre-digital clock and you want to hire a hotshot. You need someone who knows how an antique clock works.”