Four cloud solutions win DOD approval

Four cloud service solutions have been provisional authority to compete for Defense Department contracts, though only for unclassified levels of information, FCW.com’s Frank Konkel reports.

The quartet of solutions are:

• Autonomic Resources Cloud Platform (ARC-P)
• CGI Federal's IaaS solution
• Amazon Web Services' Government Community Cloud
• Amazon Web Services' East/West U.S. Public Cloud

Cloud computing is expected to bring the DOD substantial savings, but much of the savings will occur when high-risk unclassified data is handled by the cloud – the four solutions have only been authorized to handle the lowest two levels of unclassified data.

DISA Chief Technology Officer David Mihelcic said he expects formal CSP assessments for higher-risk unclassified data to begin in the second quarter of 2014.

Draft CSP standards for classified data have yet to be officially released.