The US General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it is now offering cloud based email services, making it easier for government agencies to move to the cloud.
The move to cloud based email services supports the Obama Administration’s mandates and initiatives to bring cloud services into the federal government and reduce federal data centers, which ultimately saves taxpayer dollars.
The government’s move to the cloud will lower the cost of email by up to 50 percent annually and saves $1 million for every 7,500 email boxes.
As part of this massive cloud initiative, the Federal government is also currently in the midst of consolidating its data centers as it works towards the goal of closing at least 1,200 data centers by 2015.
The GSA has rewarded a total of 17 companies through 20 blanket purchase agreements that are valued at $2.5 billion to provide federal, state, local and tribal governments with access to cloud based email services.
The cloud companies that were rewarded the contracts are Accenture Federal Services, Autonomic Resources, CGI Federal, Ciracom, Computer Sciences, Dell Federal Systems, DLT Solutions, General Dynamics Information Technology, Harris IT Services, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Onix Networking, Science Applications International, Smartronix, SRA International, Technosource, and Unisys.
“GSA has added another excellent option for agencies looking to rapidly move their email to the cloud to save time, resources and taxpayer dollars,” said Mary Davie, acting commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service. “Our innovative cloud solutions are another example of how GSA offers the best value, low cost services that help agencies serve the American people.”
The agreement allows agencies to purchase a range of cloud email services, including email as a service (billed per mailbox), Office automation, electronic records management, migration services, and integration services, with security requirements at the FISMA moderate-impact level (and FISMA high-impact level for the Secret Enclave delivery model).
They will deliver these services via four cloud models, including government community cloud, private cloud, secret enclave cloud, and public cloud.
Last year, GSA was the first federal agency to move to a cloud based email system, saving $2 million dollars to date. Over the next five years, GSA will see another 50 percent savings with an estimated $15 million reduction in IT costs.
Talk back: How do you feel about the government’s decision to switch over to cloud email services? What other areas do you think that government agencies could move its data over to the cloud? Let us know in the comments.
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Source : http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/gsa-switches-over-to-cloud-email-services-for-federal-government
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