Microsoft Gets Big Cloudy Federal Deal

Microsoft has brought home a bigger deal with the federal government than Google did last week when it hung a brace of 15,000 Gmail and Google Apps seats at the General Services Administration (GSA) on the wall.

Microsoft's got a contract for 120,000 e-mail, instant messaging, web conferencing and document-sharing seats with the Department of Agriculture.

It's supposed to be the largest government adoption of cloud software yet, according to Microsoft.

Google complained that it wasn't allowed to bid. It's already suing the Department of the Interior over an 88,000-seat messaging contract that went to Microsoft because it specified Microsoft.

Half the USDA already uses Exchange, which made its decision easier. Everything else is a confusion of other systems.

The deal should be worth about $27 million over three years, with the agency paying about $8 a head per mailbox. The USDA should save about $6 million a year.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1645299

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Microsoft Reveals Its Cloud Business Strategy

Microsoft Reveals Its Cloud Business Strategy

Cloud Computing Journal

A few days ago, Microsoft published The Economics of the Cloud, a whitepaper that has so far not gotten nearly as much attention or consideration as it deserves. Perhaps this indifference is due to a collective freshman flashback on the dreaded "Econ 101" or, to skepticism about Microsoft's importance in the new world of cloud computing. Either way, it is unfortunate because the paper presents some startling new data about the cloud, and, not entirely intentionally, reveals the company's cloud strategy at a level of nuance that we have not seen before.
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