The GSA's new Apps.gov initiative is designed to provide storage, virtualization, and Web hosting solutions to all levels of government in the US.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Infrastructure services provider Eyak Technology (www.eyaktek.com) and its enterprise IaaS provider partner Horizon Data Center Solutions (www.horizondcs.com) have been awarded a five year, competitively bid contract from the US General Services Administration (www.gsa.gov) to provide a suite of virtualized services for the Federal Government Cloud initiative.
According to EyakTek’s recent announcement, the awarded Blanket Purchase Agreement, which simplifies the task of obtaining new products and services, is “the culmination of the government’s mandate to move Federal computing to the cloud.” The BPA will let government agencies procure virtualized machines, hosting and storage, through the Apps.Gov portal, which fulfills the government’s mission to move to more efficient, less capital intensive computing solutions.
The BPA was awarded to EyakTek and Horizon across all three aspects of the requirement – virtual machines, hosting and storage.
EyakTek was also the five recipient of the recently awarded Data.gov Shared Services BPA issued by GSA, designed to enable government agencies to accomplish their “E-Gov” initiatives through a shared services environment. Horizon Data Center Solutions, in turn, has received Department of Defense (www.defense.gov) awards for colocation and IaaS both as a sub and prime contractor.
“Horizon is very pleased to be partnered with EyakTek on this milestone award,” Horizon chief executive officer Lance Black said in a statement. “Partnering with EyakTek was a very easy decision to make. They have strong VMware experience and engineering support, combined with a successful track record with government hosting contracts like Data.Gov. We believe that the Horizon IaaS, which is VMware based, coupled with Eyak’s experience made our selection by the GSA a logical choice.”
EyakTek and Horizon have been working together for nearly two years, over which time, Black said, the company was able to discover the best ways to work together, and best leverage their strengths. “We know that the Cloud is new to many government users and we believe that the combination of our respective skill sets makes us an exciting solution for the government user,” he said.
Interestingly, Horizon and EyakTek are one of only a few companies considered by the government that offered a VMware-based solution.
“EyakTek chose Horizon as a partner for several reasons,” EyakTek CEO Keith Gordaoff said. “To begin with, their IaaS offering was a ‘purpose-built’ Cloud architecture. It was intended to be a cloud solution from day one. Horizon has chosen VMware to power its IaaS offering, and EyakTek believes that as the leading enterprise virtualization software, government users are going to want to gravitate towards the VMware solution.”
Gordaoff continued, “EyakTek’s customers are federal agencies that have stringent security requirements for their data; our Cloud computing platforms are located in Horizon’s data centers which meet government security requirements and are LEED Silver and Gold certified.”
No related posts.
