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Monday, July 11, 2011

Data Center Firm Horizon Certified to Provide Cloud Services to US Government

By Nicole Henderson,July 06, 2011

A video from Horizon's website shows its CEO Lance Black
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Data center operator Horizon Data Center Solutions (http://www.horizondcs.com/) announced on Tuesday that it has received the "Authority to Operate" as a cloud computing provider to the federal government. The government has made a commitment to move its services to the cloud as part of its Cloud First policy.

This announcement comes almost a month after the US government's first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, resigned.

According to the press release, this certification was awarded after completing the Federal Information Security Management Act compliance process.

The contract was initially awarded in November 2010, and Horizon began adding staff in February to assist with the Blanket Purchase Agreement.

Horizon says that with its technology integration partner, Eyak Technology (http://www.eyaktek.com/), it is the first contractor team to receive FISMA certification and ATO to provide cloud hosting and virtual machines to federal government agencies through GSA's IaaS Blanket Purchase Agreement.
"With this ATO, Horizon's purpose built cloud is officially open for government business, and Horizon and EyakTek are ready to take the lead in helping federal agencies save money by accessing the incredible potential of our highly secure, cloud-based services," Lance Black, chief executive officer of Horizon DCS said in a statement.

Black says that before receiving the ATO, Horizon's vStructure IaaS was assessed and authorized through an eight-month process. The system was evaluated on more than 750 control points, according to the press release. This process is a requirement for all information systems used or operated by US federal agencies, Horizon says.

Black says the process requires "thirty times the testing and validation that is required in a typical commercial audit, such as a SAS 70 Type II audit."

"We chose Horizon as our technology partner on the IaaS BPA because they have built an environment that ensures that government agencies no longer have to worry about having enough capacity to meet their consituent's needs," Jodi Kohut, director of cloud services for EyakTek said in a statement. "Agencies get access to state of the art technology and unlimited capacity, and the government is not paying for expensive data centers or equipment they don't need."

In June, chief operating officer Bruce Hart for government hosting provider Terremark Federal Group talked about the process of becoming a government certified IT service provider in an email interview with the WHIR.