VMware Pursues Federal Cloud Contracts

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

VMware is trying to convert its large presence as the virtualization supplier for federal agencies and become a supplier of public cloud services to the US government. The company on Tuesday is launching vCloud Government Service. Well, almost. Stopping just short of that, it’s announced a bid to secure FedRAMP Authority to operate a hybrid cloud service for the government.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Program (FedRAMP) is a set of security and operations requirements drawn up by National Institute of Standards and Technology that must be verified as being in place at a service provider by a third-party audit. Getting FedRAMP approval "requires a lot of time and can hinder innovation and drive up costs," wrote Sean Applegate, director of federal technology strategy at Riverbed Technology, in a recent posting on InformationWeek.com…

Once FedRAMP Authority is approved, its service will be known as VMware vCloud Government Service. But it won’t be running in VMware’s four U.S. vCloud data centers. To meet the FedRAMP requirements, the service will be hosted in service provider Carpathia’s data centers. That means it will be known by the full name of VMware vCloud Government Service Provided by Carpathia, said Angelos Kottas, director of product marketing, public sector for vCloud Hybrid Service…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-computing/vmware-pursues-federal-cloud-contracts/d/d-id/1114107

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