The Department of Agriculture has announced it is going live with a commercial cloud services contract for its Enterprise Messaging Service that includes email, web conferencing, document collaboration, and instant messaging.
The department awarded Dell a contract in May to implement Microsoft Online Services for 120,000 users across 21 email systems.
The software as a service – SasS — deployment will include Exchange Online for messaging and calendaring, SharePoint Online for document collaboration, Office Communications Online for instant messaging and Office Live Meeting for web conferencing, said USDA.
"Migrating an enterprise of USDA’s size and complexity from multiple environments, across multiple agencies, requires not only a trusted enterprise-ready solution, but also a partner who is able to work with us and navigate everything from archiving to authentication to mobile phone support," said USDA CIO Chris Smith.
"With a focused cloud roadmap, we saw a clear opportunity to achieve our cost savings and consolidation goals, and tap into the promise of the cloud,” he added.
