HHS Bought Additional Cloud Storage for HealthCare.gov Just Days before Healthcare.gov launch
January 27, 2014
Grazed from NextGov. Author: Joseph Marks.
The agency in charge of HealthCare.gov bought an emergency cache of computing power from Verizon?s cloud division just days before the online insurance marketplace’s troubled launch on Oct. 1, 2013, contracting documents show. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services bought an additional $8.8 million in cloud computing power on Sept. 26 after stress tests revealed the site as it had been constructed could only handle about 10,000 concurrent users, far shy of its expected peak of 50,000 concurrent users, CMS said.
Verizon added that cloud space on Sept. 30, the day before HealthCare.gov went live, according to the notice posted on Friday to the Federal Business Opportunities contracting website. The move could add fuel to arguments the government was ill-prepared for the HealthCare.gov launch…
By late September, the cost of computer cloud space needed to share plan and price information with insurance seekers on HealthCare.gov and state-run Obamacare exchanges had already tripled to $37 million from roughly $11 million when Verizon’s cloud division Terremark first won the contract in 2011. The September modification brought that price tag to $46 million, more than four times CMS’ original estimate…
Read more from the source @ http://www.nextgov.com/health/2014/01/hhs-bought-additional-cloud-storage-healthcaregov-just-days-site-launched/77588/?oref=ng-HPriver