Microsoft has been working hard to establish Azure as a trusted and certified cloud solution, and has picked up industry leading certifications here in the US and around the globe.
Whether its certifications that guarantee patient privacy for healthcare providers or security certifications for law enforcement agencies, Microsoft’s Azure and Azure Government are getting more and more government contracts.
And now Microsoft is going beyond just certifications, and actually opening up two isolated data centers to meet the United State’s Department of Defense’s needs. The new comes from FedScoop.com, via Bloomberg, which notes that the two new data centers will be able to store Impact Level 5 data. This is the second highest level of sensitive U.S. government information and could lead to an increasing number of federal contracts.
FedScoop’s report also notes that Microsoft has already achieved some impressive numbers for its Azure Government. FedScoop notes:
…nearly 6 million users across more than 7,000 federal, state and local government customer accounts now use Microsoft’s Government Cloud… Microsoft has signed Criminal Justice Information Services agreements in 23 states, covering more than 60 percent of the U.S. population.
Jason Zander, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Azure, notes that the last figure for Criminal Justice Information Services agreements is “nearly six times the number signed by our nearest cloud competitor.”
The two facilities will go online sometime in 2017 and provide Microsoft Azure Government and Office 365 US Government Defense services among others. And these data centers will house DoD National Security System data used by both DoD agencies and qualified contractors.
