Texas and Amazon Unite on Cloud Services Contract

Grazed from GovTech. Author: Brian Heaton.

The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) and Amazon Web Services have partnered to make it easier for state agencies and other customers of the DIR to move to the cloud. The DIR has negotiated a contract with Amazon that enables state customers to buy cloud services directly through the vendor.

Amazon is one of 22 companies the DIR has contracts with for cloud technology under its cooperative contracts program. Prior to the new arrangement, Texas agencies had to conduct their own separate procurements and vendor solicitations. While the DIR has contracts with various Amazon reseller businesses, the new contract is the first statewide agreement Amazon has held, according to Shannon Kelley, contract manager with the Texas DIR…

Kelley explained that Texas agencies have been asking for a cloud services on-contract, and she said she felt the long process of vetting the security, privacy, disaster recovery and customer support terms of the deal will ultimately benefit DIR customers in the long run…

Read more from the source @ http://www.govtech.com/computing/Texas-and-Amazon-Unite-on-Cloud-Services-Contract.html