Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Microsoft's hosted apps earn federal certification

This week, Microsoft's BPOS-Federal hosted service earned FISMA certification

Microsoft said on Wednesday that its BPOS-Federal service has received an important certification that allows federal organizations to use the service.

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is a set of services that includes Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online.

The service achieved certification this week under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), which established a stringent security standard that some federal agencies must require their vendors to comply with.

Microsoft's certification will allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture to migrate its 120,000 workers to BPOS-Federal and means that other federal agencies can also choose to use the service. The USDA announced late last year that it planned to start using the hosted BPOS offering.

Microsoft said it also plans to pursue FISMA certification for Office 365, a new hosted suite of products that is scheduled to launch soon.

FISMA certification has been at the heart of a war of words between Microsoft and Google. Last week, Microsoft complained that Google is lying about its hosted Apps for Government being FISMA certified. Microsoft pointed to recently released court documents in which the U.S. Department of Justice said that although Google widely markets the service as having FISMA certification, in fact it doesn't.

Google countered by saying that it received FISMA certification for the service last year but had since changed the name of the service and added two enhancements. FISMA sets out a process for recertification when vendors make changes to their products, and Google is working through that recertification process now, it said. Google argues that the service remains authorized during the recertification process.

The dispute indicates how important government deals are for both companies.

Both have won deals across the country to use their hosted services. Google has won deals to supply hosted services to the U.S. General Services Administration as well as agencies in Washington, D.C.; Orlando; the state of Wyoming; Larimer County, Colorado; the New Mexico attorney general; and Multnomah County, Oregon.

Microsoft has signed some large government deals as well, including with the USDA; New York City; agencies in California; the state of Minnesota; the city of Alexandria, Virginia; and Colorado's Department of Labor and Employment.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, General Services Administration, Google, IDG, Microsoft
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Microsoft, Google, government, Government use of IT, services, Hosted
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Optimised Data Protection for VMware® Environments with Symantec NetBackup™ Appliances
    VMware® remains the most widely deployed virtualisation solution. The explosive growth of VMware infrastructure in organisations both large and small has enabled corporations to more fully exploit their hardware investments. With multiple virtual machines running on few physical hardware nodes, hardware costs are reduced, as well as space, power, and cooling requirements. This white paper discusses in more detail how VMware environments can be protected with the NetBackup appliances. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • Email Encryption/Decryption and Signing integrated into a comprehensive content security solution
    Clearswift’s SECURE Email Gateway provides an easy to use approach to providing secure email conversations. The technology enables customers to provide the privacy, authenticity and integrity of the communication that secure messaging offers, but without the complexity and high administration cost of other systems. The Clearswift SECURE Email Gateway with integrated encryption technology enables business to communicate with confidence and protects them from the risk of sensitive data loss.
    Learn more »
  • Configuration, Not Coding
    For years, many support teams have been hamstrung by their traditional service desk platforms, which require complex, time-consuming coding for virtually every aspect of customisation. This paper can show how organisations can complete their initial deployments quickly, easily and adapt efficiently to the evolving needs of the business with Nimsoft Service Desk.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments