Cloud innovation to support government’s mission
Our work with the United States government is built on a foundation of enduring partnership. We work closely with our federal partners, learning and understanding how they work and their specific needs, then adapting our technology to achieve their mission objectives. As a result, we have intentionally designed, evolved, and grown our government cloud solutions over the years to meet unique criteria of both civilian agencies and the defense and intelligence community. With our continuous technological innovations, and a growing team of domain and technical experts, I’m looking forward to new opportunities to help support our government in the month and years to come.
By leveraging a range of technology tools, including Microsoft Azure cloud and AI solutions, and Microsoft Teams and Office 365, agencies across the federal government were able to continue to meet their missions, even under unprecedented circumstances. We’ve continued to innovate across our government technology portfolio in the past year – and we continue to evolve our offerings. Here are a few examples:
- Offering cloud capabilities at all data classification levels – we are delivering commercial innovation for classified data with the expansion of Azure Government Secret and the announcement of Azure Government Top Secret, currently in accreditation.
- Expanding capabilities at the tactical edge – we recognize the reality of our hybrid world and not everything can or will operate in the cloud.
- Taking the next giant leap with Azure Space – fast, secure worldwide satellite networking can give mission owners a new communications channel and ubiquitous, hyperscale computing environment. Microsoft is the only company working to deliver multiple connectivity paths and network options to provide true global cloud capability.
- We also recently announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to bring Microsoft Azure to the International Space Station, delivering edge computing and artificial intelligence capabilities in space for the first time.
We’ve continued to advance the Microsoft cloud to meet the full spectrum of government needs while complying with stringent U.S. regulatory standards, including:
- Microsoft 365 Government meets FedRAMP High, the Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) and Impact Level 5 (IL5).
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 and our Power Platform recently received DOD IL5 provisional authorization.
- Azure Government achieves FedRAMP High, DOD IL4 and IL5.
Federal Momentum
For more than 40 years, we have been a committed technology partner for the federal government. Today, our work with the federal government includes every federal cabinet agency and branch of the DoD. Time and again, federal agencies have chosen Microsoft to solve their most challenging problems. These include:
- supporting the U.S. Department of Defense to rapidly transition its workforce of one million plus from the office to working remote in a matter of weeks at the outset of the pandemic. This was the “largest rollout ever implemented in this short amount of time,” as noted by the Department’s then CIO, Dana Deasy.
- advancing digital transformation efforts and cloud-based productivity capabilities through the Defense Enterprise Office Solution, the DoD’s enterprise-wide solution to deploy Microsoft 365 software and services to their 3 million+ workforce;
- enabling the Small Business Administration to incorporate enhanced security into its new remote work environment. Leveraging Microsoft cloud and AI capabilities, SBA is developing a zero-trust security environment for its 20,000 plus workforce to ensure the agency can securely distribute pandemic-related funds to boost the nation’s economy.
- innovating with the Department of Veterans Affairs to pilot a next generation hospital through its “Project Convergence” The VA is partnering with Verizon to enable a 5G infrastructure at its Palo Alto, California facility and with Microsoft to deploy HoloLens 2 devices to help doctors access and manipulate complex information in interactive models and 3D holograms.
We also continue to expand industry partnerships to bring the latest Microsoft technology to more federal agencies – we recently announced an agreement with GDIT to extend Azure services, including access to Azure Government classified regions to their federal clients. This partnership builds on GDIT’s recent win on the Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) contract, the enterprise-wide solution to deploy Microsoft 365 software and services to the 3 million+ DoD employees.
Custom approach
Microsoft’s momentum with federal agencies is the result of our technology, our people and trust developed over decades. Our innovative and trusted intelligent cloud, productivity and collaboration tools, and business application solutions work together to enable greater depth of insights faster, for better decision making and outcomes.
We’ve brought on a team of experts that have lived mission and understand the challenges faced by the customer, embedded in our engineering teams. These include a Medal of Honor recipient, former leaders of large analyst teams, former National Security Council staffers, and infantry platoon leaders. They also include engineers that have worked deeply in national security domains at agencies such as DARPA.
This continuous advancement, innovation and engagement reflects why the DOD selected and later reaffirmed that our Microsoft Azure-powered JEDI proposal “continues to represent the best value to the government.” Work on this project is on hold as legal challenges are litigated. We are ready to immediately begin performance to deliver on JEDI as soon as the litigation is resolved — and we hope that happens soon for the sake of our military men and women who urgently need these mission-critical capabilities.
Looking ahead
As we stand in the early months of 2021, many urgent challenges remain, not least of which involve the efforts to control the pandemic. Microsoft is committed to continuing our work across all levels of government to help provide tools and resources to enable the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in a safe, secure and equitable manner.
Our commitment to the next 40 years of partnership with — and support of — the U.S. government has never been stronger or felt more exciting, as we roll up our sleeves together to usher in digital transformation of which we can all be proud.
