Monday, August 19, 2013

10 Firms Win Parts of $10 Billion U.S. Interior Dept. Cloud Computing Contract

Verizon is among 10 firms supplying portions of a $10 billion 10-year contract for cloud services to be used by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Cloud-based storage, secure file transfer, virtual machine, and database, web, and development and test services projects are among the functions and services the Department of Interior purchased.

AT&T, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Unisys, CGI Group, Aquilent, Smartronix, Autonomic Resources and Global Technology Resources got parts of the contract as well.

IBM says it won $1 billion, the largest contract it ever has gotten from the federal government for cloud-related services.

As always, the contracts might best be described as representing a “maximum of $1 billion” for IBM, since the actual value will hinge on how fast the projects can be implemented.

Amazon earlier in 2013 won a $400 million, four year deal to provider services to the Central Intelligence Agency.

The bids do not settle the issue of who the dominant suppliers ultimately will prove to be in the U.S. market, since the market is just beginning in earnest.

Nor do the bids definitively answer the question of how much success major U.S. telcos will ultimately have in the cloud services market, and how far their success could extend beyond transport services.

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