Amazon announced the release of cloud services aimed specifically at U.S. government users and contractors, joining a growing list of cloud service providers including Microsoft and Google that also have modified their cloud services to meet the unique needs of government, Informationweek.com reported.
According to Amazon, the new offering, Amazon Web Services GovCloud, will meet a host of strict regulatory requirements specific to government. It's designed to meet moderate security control levels under the Federal Information Security Management Act and to meet FIPS 140-2, a federal cryptography standard.
The servers powering Amazon Web Services GovCloud will be physically located on the West Coast of the United States, giving customers further assurance that their data will stay in this country.
Clouds like Amazon's GovCloud that meet government requirements will likely increase government adoption. Amazon is offering GovCloud through either a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme or on a year or multi-year term.
Some government customers have been using Amazon Web Services even before the release of GovCloud. According to Amazon, more than 100 state, local, and federal agencies in the United States alone are using Amazon Web Services. Among those users are the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which powers the Recovery.gov stimulus-tracking website with AWS, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which uses AWS to process high-resolution imagery.
