Who's who on GSA's cloud contract

EDITOR's NOTE: This story was updated May 26 to correct AT&T's information. The company has not announced teammates for this contract.

The government’s push for cloud computing continues to gather an air of inevitability. Recently, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced that every agency has at least one cloud computing project in the works.

In October 2010, the General Services Administration awarded its infrastructure-as-a-service blanket purchase agreement as a ready-made tool for purchasing a variety of cloud services.

On our website, we have built a cloud resources page that has links to information you need to know about diving into cloud computing and making it a part of your go-to-market strategy.

We break down the 12 winners of GSA’s IaaS contract, including their partners and a snapshot of their cloud strategy.

Apptis Inc.
www.apptis.com
Teammate: Amazon Web Services.
Cloud strategy: Apptis and Amazon have built a portal, named FedCloud.com, to meet security and reporting requirements. The portal lets agency users add technology resources or drop resources as needs dictate. The portal also lets users manage costs and meet compliance requirements.

AT&T Government Solutions
www.corp.att.com/gov
Cloud strategy: AT&T offers computing services, hosting and managed applications on a continuum from managed services to a user-managed, hosting services. AT&T offers a pay-as-you-go service to quickly access computing power when it is needed. Other services include storage on-demand for agencies that have fluctuating storage needs.

Autonomic Resources
www.autonomicresources.com
Cloud strategy: The company has developed the ARC Platform as its cloud offering. The company offers data center services. ARC Platform also deals with service-oriented infrastructure needs and compliance problems and gives customers a choice about technologies, such as working with a Windows operating system or Linux.

Carahsoft Technology Corp.
www.carahsoft.com
Teammates: VMware, Appistry, Salesforce.com, Xsigo and Wyse Technology.
Cloud strategy: Carahsoft offers a variety of products and services for desktop virtualization and data center virtualization, in addition to help with transitioning to a cloud environment.

CGI Federal Inc.
www.cgi.com
Cloud strategy: CGI offers virtual computing resources, desktop as a service and laptop/backup as a service. The company offers on-demand access to computing resources, storage and network capacity. CGI also has consulting services to help agencies develop their cloud strategies.

Computer Literacy World Inc.
Website: Not available.
Teammates: Electrosoft, XO Communications and Secure Networks
Strategy: Information is not available about Computer Literacy World Inc. Its partners offer a variety of cloud infrastructure services, such as consulting, network monitoring, hosted services and security.

Computer Technologies Consultants Inc.
usa-ctc.com
Teammate: Softlayer Inc.
Strategy: The company provides installation, migration, support and maintenance of hosted computing environments. Its managed services offering is used by the State Department’s International Information Programs content management system that hosts more than 400 websites.

Eyak Technology Inc.
www.eyaktek.com
Teammate: Horizon Data Center Solutions of Dallas, which has partnerships with Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., F5, 3Par, Juniper, Force10, AboveNet and FiberLight.
Cloud strategy: The team provides a framework for on-demand computer resources, such as cloud storage, virtual machines and Web hosting. Eyak and Horizon provide a Web-based portal to let customers buy processing power, memory, storage and bandwidth.

General Dynamics Information Technology
www.gdit.com
Teammate: Carpathia.
Strategy: General Dynamics Information Technology
www.gdit.com
Teammate: Carpathia
Strategy: General Dynamics’ approach allows agencies to use existing resources but avoid building new infrastructures. Customers can access internet-based resources including networks, storage and servers. The focus is on general purpose virtual machine services to support application hosting environments. The offering supports Windows, Linux or Solaris operating systems.

Insight Public Sector
www.ips.insights.com
Teammate: Microsoft.
Cloud strategy: The focus is on scalability, security and performance. Services include data backup and restore, desktop management, and data center environment through managed collocation and hosting.

Savvis Federal Systems
www.savvis.com
Strategy: The company has a cloud offering named Savvis Symphony Virtual Private Data Center that can provide enterprise-level data center services. Customers do not have to buy hardware. The company offers quality of service and service-level agreements. A variety of applications can be used including Web hosting, testing and development and mission-critical applications.

Verizon Federal Inc.
www.verizonbusiness.com
Strategy: Verizon has an on-demand cloud computing platform that can be used for mission-critical applications and as a way to transition to a service-based cost model for computing. Verizon is increasing its cloud capabilities with the expansion of several data centers in addition to the acquisition of Terremark.