Microsoft nabs part of the intelligence community cloud market in new deal
Microsoft scored a key opportunity to provide all of its Cloud for Government offerings to the 17 agencies in the intelligence community.
The company announced Wednesday that through an extension of a joint enterprise licensing agreement between Dell — which resells Microsoft’s products — and the intelligence agencies, it will now be able to provide agencies like the CIA and FBI products like Windows 10, Office 365 and the Azure Government cloud.
“The IC is responsible for handling some of the toughest problems facing the nation, harnessing the intelligence derived from the most sensitive data at unprecedented scale. This new agreement provides the IC with a vehicle for accessing the latest Microsoft technologies to further empower its agencies, optimize operations and modernize infrastructure,” Toni Townes-Whitley, Microsoft corporate vice president of industry, wrote in a blog post.
Dell’s extended agreement with the IC “positions Microsoft to help the IC achieve its mission at home and around the world with a trusted cloud and modern workplace solution that keeps critical data secure, while delivering advanced capabilities including artificial intelligence, machine learning and large-scale data analysis,” Townes-Whitley wrote.
The deal, which the company vaguely said could be worth hundreds of millions over the span of its six years, is a big win for Microsoft as it gives it a chance to compete in the intelligence community cloud market which has been mostly dominated by Amazon Web Services of late. AWS was chosen in 2014 to build a classified marketplace for the intelligence community through a contract with the CIA. However, AWS is the only cloud vendor currently authorized to hold the most sensitive government data at the so-called impact level 6 for classified information.
