US Veterans Affairs terminates $36 million cloud deal with HP
July 16, 2013
Grazed from FCW. Author: Frank Konkel.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has terminated its five-year, $36 million cloud computing contract with HP Enterprise Services, citing a material change in the agency’s requirements. The deal, signed in November 2012, was to eventually move 600,000 VA employees to Microsoft government community cloud e-mail and calendaring services.
Yet only test accounts — no actual users — from VA actually made it to the cloud, despite the agency having the capabilities in place to do so. Those test accounts have since been removed by VA, according to a statement from the agency to FCW. "VA has decided to terminate the cloud email contract for the convenience of the government," a spokesperson for the agency said…
A contract terminated out of convenience means the cancelation was not the contractor’s fault and was driven by changes in VA’s requirements, the spokesperson clarified. As such, the now-dead deal will cost VA about $150,000 for services performed, plus what could be a sizeable termination settlement…
Read more from the source @ http://fcw.com/articles/2013/07/16/va-hp-cloud-contract-cancelled.aspx