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VA Building Largest Cloud Computing Environment In The Federal Government

March 4, 2011 - Last week the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took the proverbial first step in their long journey to build a massive cloud computing environment to host their email services. The actual environments creating the clouds will exist in 4 separate data centers, which will be contractor-owned.

The VA's cloud project will have the capacity to host 60,000 Microsoft Exchange e-mail boxes. In addition to being endowed with extensive archiving capabilities, the cloud project will have the ability to manage both Blackberry email and Microsoft's SharePoint software while affording widespread storage and backup capabilities. Once completed, this program will be the largest of its kind across the entire federal government.   

The VA's cloud project will end up being worth around $150 million and within the next 5 years, cloud computing will grow to consume 25% of an $80 billion IT budget earmarked for the federal government. The VA sent out a request for information granting vendors the chance to be a part of the project.

The VA has had its problems with its network security over the last couple years. As the VA plans on managing its email system "as a commodity on an enterprise level," they will likely end up saving money in the long run. Because of the attractiveness of the program, the network needs to be secure. The VA needs to design and implement a feasible solution for their current system, which is still flawed.

Security is important for another reason as well. Both Google and Microsoft are looking to own the "federal cloud marketplace" and will likely pay a lot of money to be able to bring a cloud environment of this size to the public. Flawed and vulnerable systems do not make for attractive cloud computing environments. The VA has given vendors interested in the cloud system until March 14, 2011 to respond to its request for information.