Oracle launches cloud services built for government agencies
Connecting state and local government leaders
The company's Government Cloud will give agencies more options as they move mission-critical applications to the cloud, according to company officials.
The options for federal agencies looking to move IT services to the cloud continue to grow.
Oracle has launched the Oracle Government Cloud “to give its government customers more agility and options as they move mission-critical applications to the cloud,” the company said in a release. The software company is offering a suite of cloud applications and solutions within a secure infrastructure built specifically for government.
Oracle entered the cloud computing space in 2011 with the introduction of the Oracle Public Cloud, a subscription-based set of integrated services that provides organizations with self-service access to Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, all managed, hosted and supported by the company. Shortly afterwards, Oracle acquired RightNow Technologies, a provider of cloud-based customer relationship management software with a sizeable presence in government agencies.
The Government Cloud is a much broader initiative designed for agencies to leverage multiple service options – with software as a service offerings available now and infrastructure as a service and platform as a service coming soon.
Solutions available now include Service Cloud, RightNow Policy Automation and Learn Cloud, which will help agencies streamline a breadth of business processes, from financial and human resources management to customer service and project management, company officials said.
Additionally, the company “is formally engaged in the process of securing Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program approval,” Patrick Mungovan, vice president of strategic programs with Oracle Public Sector, told GCN.
Currently, six cloud providers have been granted provisional authority, the highest security level under the program, including Akamai, AT&T, Autonomic Resources, CGI Federal, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed Martin. Three other cloud services have been granted agency Authority to Operate, including Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud and US East/West offerings, each receiving authorization by the Health and Human Services Department. The Agriculture Department’s National Information Technology Center has also been granted an authority to operate by the USDA Office of the CIO.
Meanwhile, in related government-cloud news, Amazon Web Services recently upgraded its CloudFormation management platform. IT administrators can now create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in an orderly and predictable fashion. CloudFormation is now available in AWS GovCloud (US), an isolated AWS region designed to allow U.S. government agencies to move sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements.