AT&T Launches Cloud Storage for Federal Government Agencies

Against the backdrop of a survey demonstrating cost savings that can be attained by federal government adoption of cloud computing, AT&T Inc. announced a cloud-based storage solution designed to meet the security requirements of federal government agencies.

The offer, Synaptic Storage as a Service for Government, is a multi-tenant, community cloud offer. It has the same features, policies, capabilities, and EMC Atmos technology as AT&T s commercial cloud storage offer but adds further security measures including:

• storage towers that are physically separated from other users towers in the data center;
• separate logical cloud for government data;
• government customer data will not co-exist with commercial data;
• separate cloud portal partition for government agencies; All government agency customers and their authorized users are assigned RSA hard token for 2-factor authentication.

A survey of federal IT leaders, conducted by Meritalk, sheds light on both the appetite for cloud conversion in the federal sector and the challenges agencies face regarding the logistics of such a move. While the survey found the federal government could save $18.9 billion annually by migrating services and applications to the cloud, only 41% of respondents said their agency is considering cloud as part of their overall IT strategy. Additionally, 51% said they use cloud only for a limited number of specific applications and more than half of feds gave their agency a C or below on progress toward cloud.

“Federal agencies want the mobility, collaboration, information sharing and efficiency that cloud offers but they can t afford to adopt cloud solutions that sacrifice performance, reliability and above all, security,” said Kay Kapoor, president, AT&T government solutions. “Our new STaaS for government offer delivers the key attributes federal buyers require and allows them to move to the cloud with ease and confidence.“