Amazon Web Services has announced AWS GovCloud,
a new AWS Region designed to enable U.S. government agencies to move
more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific
regulatory and compliance requirements.
Previously, government agencies with data
subject to compliance regulations such as the ITAR (International Traffic in
Arms Regulations), which governs how organizations manage and
store defense-related data, were unable to process and store data in
the cloud that the federal government mandated be accessible only by
U.S. persons, AWS officials said.
However, because AWS GovCloud is physically and
logically accessible by U.S. persons only, government agencies can now
manage more heavily regulated data in AWS while remaining compliant
with strict federal requirement, AWS officials said.
Andy Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services, introduced the new government cloud service at the 2011 NASA IT Summit on Aug. 16 in San Francisco.
The new Region offers the same high level of
security as other AWS Regions and supports existing AWS security
controls and certifications such as the Federal Information Security
Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), FIPS 140-2 compliant end points,
SAS-70, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS Level 1. AWS also provides an
environment that enables agencies to comply with HIPAA regulations, the
company said.
AWS resources deployed from AWS GovCloud such
as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage
Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) are
available on-demand and agencies pay only for what they use, enabling
the U.S. government to benefit from the flexibility, scalability and
low pay-as-you-go pricing of AWS. To get started using AWS
GovCloud, visit http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us.
“Just as we are early explorers of outer
space, JPL have been early explorers of the cloud computing space,”
said Tomas Soderstrom, chief technology officer in the Office of the
CIO at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a
statement. “We’ve leveraged AWS in our missions for a few years
now and were the first to use cloud computing for daily operations. By
working with cloud computing providers such as AWS, we gain the
flexibility to move quickly, acquire IT resources on-demand and save
money by paying only for the resources we use. This implements the JPL
CIO, Jim Rinaldi's, vision of provisioning instead of procuring
hardware. As we move more workloads into the cloud, we look forward to
leveraging ITAR compliant clouds, such as the new AWS GovCloud for our
compliance-dependent projects so we can continue to look to the cloud
first for even more missions.”
“In March of 2010, the U.S. Recovery and
Accountability Transparency Board became the first government-wide
agency to migrate to a cloud-based technology infrastructure when it
moved Recovery.gov to AWS,” said Teresa Carlson, vice president of
Global Public Sector at Amazon Web Services, in a statement. “In
one budget cycle alone, the Recovery and Accountability board was able
to save $750,000 by leveraging AWS. Today, over 100 government agencies
are taking advantage of AWS and we’re excited to continue working with
agencies as they implement the Federal Cloud First policy to become
more efficient, agile, and innovative through more effective use of
technology infrastructure. AWS GovCloud is the next step in that
evolution.”
To learn more about how U.S. government agencies are leveraging Amazon Web Services, visit http://aws.amazon.com/federal/.
Meanwhile, for its part, Microsoft launched a government-focused cloud service of its own in 2010. At the eighth annual Microsoft U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit in February 2010, Microsoft unveiled a number of new enhancements and certifications for the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). The company also launched a new dedicated government cloud offering based on the BPOS.
“Microsoft is the first and only cloud provider to
offer this level of protection and security for governments,” said Ron
Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online at the time of
that announcement. “We were able to achieve this industry first thanks
to our experience providing dedicated cloud services for the past five
years.” Markezich is now corporate vice president of Microsoft’s U.S.
Enterprise and Partner Group.
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