Top 20 Government Cloud Service Providers
Nearly a dozen teams of technology vendors have been approved to provide IT infrastructure as a service to government agencies through Apps.gov, the General Services Administration's cloud computing portal. The new blanket service agreement makes it possible for federal, state and local government agencies to order on-demand virtual servers, cloud storage and web hosting as needed from GSA-approved service providers. Cloud vendors must satisfy FISMA's "moderate impact" data security level to par
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Defense contractor General Dynamics is partnering with Carpathia Hosting to provide cloud services through Apps.gov. The pairing combines an established industry veteran (General Dynamics Information Technology has been in business for 50 years and employs 17,000) with a newer, smaller company (Carpathia was founded in 2003). Carpathia operates 12 data centers worldwide, including three in Virginia. The company refers to its highly secure data center in Dulles, Va., as The Vault.
The federal government's standards organization plans to develop a roadmap for cloud computing standards and guidance. Developing a roadmap, National Institute of Standards and Technology officials said, will help prioritize standards efforts, looking to remove perceived barriers to cloud adoption around security, interoperability, portability and reliability. NIST's initial plan is to define targeted government cloud computing use cases and determine the priorities, risks and obstacles to making those use cases a reality within government. The agency then will help build a neutral cloud computing reference architecture and taxonomy, and finally create a roadmap. In the end, the effort may lead to standards, guidance, research and development prioritization, prototypes and pilots of reference implementations and perhaps even new administration policy on cloud computing.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Eyak Technology, headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska (pictured), bids for government business as an Alaska native-owned small business, and CEO Keith Gordaoff is a member of the Eyak people. Three of Eyak's other senior execs were formerly with systems integrator GTSI, based in northern Virginia. In September 2010, Eyak made a bid to acquire GTSI, but it withdrew the offer after the Small Business Administration temporarily suspended GTSI from bidding on future government contracts. That suspension was lifted in October 2010.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
AT&T launched its Synaptic cloud services for the business market in 2009, an outgrowth of the company's hosted infrastructure offerings. AT&T's pay-per-use storage (based on EMC's Atmos platform) and its virtualized, on-demand servers are offered to government agencies from the company's own data centers. AT&T provides wireless voice and data services and devices to the feds through Networx and other umbrella contracts.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
CGI Group, based in Montreal, expanded its presence in the U.S. government market in 2010 with the $1 billion acquisition of Stanley Inc., an IT solutions provider to civilian, defense and intelligence agencies. Among the services provided by CGI Federal are engineering, implementation of biometric systems, and business process management. CGI provides IT services via "global delivery centers" that are located in rural communities in Alabama and Virginia, as well as in Europe and India.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Computer Literacy World, a small business in Upper Marlboro, Md., has teamed with Electrosoft, XO Communications and Secure Networks to provide infrastructure as a service through GSA's Apps.gov site. Communications service provider XO Communications appears to be the biggest vendor among this relatively obscure group; its parent company, XO Holdings, generated $1.5 billion in revenue in 2009. Computer Literacy World provides infrastructure services on Apps.gov beginning at 9 cents per hour for 1 GB of RAM as part of a virtual machine bundle.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Computer Technologies Consultants is a small business that provides managed hosting and other IT services to government agencies and businesses. CTC partners with data center operators to provide managed hosting, as well as provide on-site management of systems housed in customer data centers. For GSA's cloud services blanket purchase agreement, CTC is joining forces with Dallas-based SoftLayer, which provides private clouds, public cloud services and "bare metal clouds" from data centers in Dallas, Seattle and northern Virginia.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Michael Dell's company is so serious about cloud computing that it once tried to trademark the term. Dell's trademark application was denied, but the company continues to push aggressively into the cloud market, as evidenced by its pending acquisition of Boomi, a startup that specializes in SaaS integration. Dell is pushing into the government market through an alliance with Autonomic Resources, Carpathia Hosting and Enomaly. Autonomic Resources, the prime contractor, qualifies for federal contracts as a "small disadvantaged business," as designated by the Small Business Administration.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Amazon.com, one of the early leaders in the cloud computing market, has teamed with privately held Apptis, a systems integrator specializing in the federal government market, to provide infrastructure as a service to federal agencies through GSA's Apps.gov. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud service has been a trailblazer in the private sector, and the partnership with Apptis represents Amazon's first big step into the federal sector. Amazon is expanding data center capacity in Oregon (pictured) and elsewhere to support the growth of its Amazon Web Services business.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
"The cloud fuels Microsoft, and Microsoft fuels the cloud," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this year. Now Microsoft, in partnership with Insight Public Sector, wants to fuel Uncle Sam's cloud. Insight, with revenue of $4.1 billion in 2009, is a major computer and software reseller and one of Microsoft's Gold Partners. This is an "outside the Beltway" combo; Microsoft is based in Redmond, Wash., and Insight in Tempe, Ariz.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Savvis, based in St. Louis, Mo., operates data centers, networks and financial exchanges throughout the world, from which it offers IT services to the financial services, healthcare, retail, telecom and other industries, and to government agencies. The company's Symphony suite of cloud services includes private clouds, multi-tenant shared clouds and "virtual private data centers." Savvis Federal Systems' customers include the Air Force, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Verizon, the wireless and cable provider to the consumer and business markets, is also a major supplier of IT services to local, state, and federal government. Verizon Federal provides networking equipment, satellite services, managed network services and wireless capabilities to civilian, defense and intelligence agencies. The company already sells to government agencies through more than a dozen contract vehicles. Verizon's cloud service offerings include computing as a service and cloud storage.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Verizon, the wireless and cable provider to the consumer and business markets, is also a major supplier of IT services to local, state, and federal government. Verizon Federal provides networking equipment, satellite services, managed network services and wireless capabilities to civilian, defense and intelligence agencies. The company already sells to government agencies through more than a dozen contract vehicles. Verizon's cloud service offerings include computing as a service and cloud storage.
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Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
Defense contractor General Dynamics is partnering with Carpathia Hosting to provide cloud services through Apps.gov. The pairing combines an established industry veteran (General Dynamics Information Technology has been in business for 50 years and employs 17,000) with a newer, smaller company (Carpathia was founded in 2003). Carpathia operates 12 data centers worldwide, including three in Virginia. The company refers to its highly secure data center in Dulles, Va., as The Vault.
The federal government's standards organization plans to develop a roadmap for cloud computing standards and guidance. Developing a roadmap, National Institute of Standards and Technology officials said, will help prioritize standards efforts, looking to remove perceived barriers to cloud adoption around security, interoperability, portability and reliability. NIST's initial plan is to define targeted government cloud computing use cases and determine the priorities, risks and obstacles to making those use cases a reality within government. The agency then will help build a neutral cloud computing reference architecture and taxonomy, and finally create a roadmap. In the end, the effort may lead to standards, guidance, research and development prioritization, prototypes and pilots of reference implementations and perhaps even new administration policy on cloud computing.
SEE ALSO:
Tech Teams Vie For Federal Cloud Business
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