Cloudburst at the US Air Force

MUMBAI, INDIA: The US Air Force in partnership with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has awarded more than 100,000 seats of Department of Defense (DoD) to a dedicated version of Microsoft Office365.

As part of the deployment, which will begin in the next government fiscal year, the Air Force will have access to secure e-mail, calendaring, Office Web Applications, Skype for Business, and other collaboration tools, helping the agency communicate more easily across active, civilian, and reserve personnel and move toward a consolidated mobile and messaging platform.

The Air Force also expects that the migration will help it realign critical resources to better support its mission in a trusted cloud environment. The agreement, one of the largest commercial cloud contracts in DoD history, has the potential to scale up and reduce costs significantly over the next three years.

In addition, by securely combining commercial and government services with Microsoft’s trusted Cloud for Government solution, the Air Force is demonstrating its commitment to building on the successful DoD Enterprise Email (DEE) initiative and its support of the DoD’s unique security requirements and best practices.