GSA Rolls Out Cloud Email Services Plan For Government

By on August 30, 2012 at 2:56 PM

The U.S. General Services Administration announced today that it is now offering cloud-based email services available to government agencies, through a new package of purchase agreements. The move is expected to make it easier for government agencies to migrate email operations over to Internet-based cloud computing service providers and reduce costs.

GSA developed 20 blanket purchase agreements and awarded them to 17 businesses today, GSA officials said. As a result, federal, state, local and tribal governments will be able to access a variety of cloud based email services.

“GSA has added another excellent option for agencies looking to rapidly move their email to the cloud to save time, resources and taxpayer dollars,” said Mary Davie, Acting Commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (pictured above).

Depending on the circumstances, moving from an in-house legacy system to one takes advantage of the economies of a cloud computing solution can lower the cost of email by up to 50% annually. GSA officials estimate that can save as much as $1 million for every 7,500 email boxes moved.

Those figures are based in part on GSA’s own experience, when it became the first federal agency to move to a cloud based email system, saving $2 million dollars to date. Over the next five years, GSA expects to see another 50% savings with an estimated $15 million reduction in IT costs.

By GSA awarding cloud email service contracts, vendors are in a more direct position to provide government entities with email, cloud-based office automation, electronic records management, migration services, and integration services.

The cloud service providers awarded the contract include four small businesses. The businesses that received these contracts are:

  • Accenture Federal Services LLC
  • Autonomic Resources LLC
  • CGI Federal Inc.
  • Ciracom Inc.
  • Computer Sciences Corporation
  • Dell Federal Systems L.P.
  • DLT Solutions
  • General Dynamics Information Technology Inc.
  • Harris IT Service Corporation
  • IBM Global Business Services
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Onix Networking Corp
  • Science Applications International Corporation
  • Smartronix Inc.
  • Systems Research and Applications Corporation
  • Technosource LLC
  • Unisys

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