HP wins US$36m cloud contract

Hewlett Packard has won a US$36m contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), providing a department-wide email and calendaring infrastructure with Microsoft Office 365 for Government.

The multinational company agreed the five-year deal to enable 600,000 department employees to securely exchange information from any location via the cloud.

Awarded under the department’s information technology modernisation contract, work will begin with 15,000 people before expanding agency wide to 600,000 when all contract options are executed.

“VA is moving to cloud-based email and collaboration as part of a broader effort to leverage emerging technologies to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and, most importantly, improve service delivery to our nation’s veterans,” says Charles De Sanno, executive director, Enterprise Systems Engineering, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Under the agreement, HP says it will lead and manage the implementation of Office 365 to enhance "reliability, security, privacy and compliance as well as create geographically diverse disaster recovery."

“The VA needed to transform into a 21st century organisation that could enable employees to collaborate more effectively,” says Marilyn Crouther, senior vice president and general manager, U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services.

“Together with the VA and Microsoft, the HP team will modernize the VA’s communications infrastructure while lowering costs and setting the stage for other U.S. government agencies to enter the cloud era.”

The VA will use Microsoft Office 365 for Government, which features a separate community cloud, for email, shared calendars, instant messaging, and web and video conferencing.

“The VA’s decision to implement Office 365 for Government with HP Enterprise Services validates our longstanding partnership and our commitment to helping them move to the cloud on their terms with the most complete productivity and collaboration tools available while keeping their information protected and secure," says Greg Myers, Microsoft Federal vice president.

Alan Kessler:

HP also announced that head of Enterprise Security Alan Kessler is leaving the company to take over as Vormetric CEO.

"Vormetric is firmly established as the enterprise encryption leader, just as the market for data security is taking off," Kessler said.

"The company has a great team in place and significant opportunities for growth in both our domestic market as well as new untapped geographies.

"It's a great time to join Vormetric. My goal is to grow the company into a front runner within the data security segment.

"We will address new high growth use cases including the cloud and big data, expand our share of the federal government space and target key international markets."