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Google beats Microsoft to US government cloud contract
Search giant victorious over Redmond behemoth after lengthy battle to win Federal cloud contract.
The US government’s Department of the Interior is to implement a new cloud-based email service from Google rather than Microsoft following a lengthy court battle.
The service will see 88,000 government employees use the email and collaboration SaaS from Google instead of its Microsoft alternative.
The Department of the Interior, (DOI - which is more like the UK’s Defra than the Home Office), originally awarded the contract to Microsoft. It was set to use the company’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) to replace its agency-wide e-mail system.
In October 2010, Google and its enterprise partner Onix Networking sued the department over the contract award, claiming it benefited Microsoft unfairly. The suit said that the Department had not considered Google Apps in its Request for Quotation.
The original request said the department was looking for a unified email, calendaring and collaboration service, but limited the choice to BPOS Federal Suite only.
September last year saw Google dropping is suit against the department. On 30 April, a public notice disclosed that Onix was awarded the contract. The winning bid was $34.9 (£21.5 million) million dollars over seven years. A lot less than the Microsoft contract of $49.3 (£30.4 million) million over five years.
An updated request from the department, posted on 9 January this year, was for a cloud-based email and collaboration service to replace its disparate on-premise systems.
The request said that the new cloud-based system needed to provision services “in a government community or private cloud solution that includes cloud-based email, calendaring, email archiving, journaling, instant messaging, desktop video conferencing, and support for mobile devices.”
It also required “a secure computing environment that complies with all required federal regulations and DOI specific security requirements”.
Microsoft said in a statement that it was “disappointed by this award”.
“We will engage with our partners and DOI to review and understand the reasons for this decision. Microsoft remains committed to providing our customers with the cloud services that have the performance, security, privacy and other capabilities they expect and deserve,” it added.
The migration is set to complete by December 2012.
