Microsoft strikes 14 new cloud services deals with state, local organizations
February 24, 2011
Microsoft said it has signed new contracts with 14 state and local government organizations for cloud computing services, including the cities of Alexandria, Va.; Chicago; and Virginia Beach, Va.; and the state departments of labor in Colorado and Idaho.
The new deals, signed in the past several weeks, bring the total to 190 state and local government organizations now using Microsoft cloud solutions, company officials said. Altogether, more than 3 million government employees are using the company’s online business services, they added.
The contracts, especially those with local governments, are coming at the rate of about one a week, said Gail Thomas-Flynn, Microsoft’s vice president of U.S. state and local government. She attributed the company’s success in part to the flexibility it provides customers in deciding which services to send to the cloud and which to maintain on site.
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Furthermore, “they know we’re in this for the long haul,” she said at Microsoft’s Public Sector CIO Summit this week in Bellevue, Wash. “This notion that suddenly [service] features can be pulled out at a whim — government is an enterprise, and at the end of the day, you can’t run with uncertainty.”
The other recent deals cover services for Winston-Salem, N.C.; King County, Wash.; Washington state’s Sound Transit; Andover, Minn.; Vernon Hills, Ill.; Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; the Michigan State Senate; Carlsbad, Calif.; and the tribal government of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama.