U.S. Veterans Dept. Signs $36 Million HP-Microsoft Cloud Deal

Grazed InformationWeek. Author: J. Nicholas Hoover.

In what could be one of the biggest cloud computing contracts to date by number of users, the Department of Veterans Affairs will move 600,000 users to Microsoft cloud email and collaboration services. The five-year, $36 million contract will first see 15,000 VA employees move to Microsoft’s government community cloud collaboration offering, Office 365 for Government, with the rest of the agency’s 600,000 users to follow over the remainder of the contract period. The agency will use Office 365 for email, calendaring, instant messaging, web and video conferences, Office collaboration tools and SharePoint.

Instead of working directly with Microsoft, VA has signed on with HP Enterprise Services, which will act as the systems integrator and provide disaster recovery services. However, VA has a long history as a big Microsoft shop. In July, for example, the agency signed a five-year enterprise agreement giving the agency access to a broad array of Microsoft products and services…

Microsoft has characterized the agency as having "one of the largest technology systems in the United States." The agency has 6,300 IT employees, 400,000 PCs and more than 100,000 mobile devices, and is the second largest federal agency, trailing only the Department of Defense. The agency’s users and IT systems are spread out across 163 hospitals, 135 nursing homes, 800 clinics and the agency’s headquarters, among other locations…

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