The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded HP Enterprise Services a $36 million, five-year contract to provide a department-wide email and calendaring infrastructure to the VA’s 600,000 users with Microsoft Office 365 for Government.
“VA is moving to cloud-based email and collaboration as part of a broader effort to leverage emerging technologies to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and, most importantly, improve service delivery to our nation’s veterans,” said VA’s Executive Director of Enterprise Systems Engineering, Charles De Sanno.
Awarded under the Veterans Administration Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (VA T4) program, the modernization effort will start with 15,000 people and expand agency wide to 600,000 people. HP will lead and manage the implementation of Office 365 for the VA to enhance reliability, security, privacy, and compliance as well as create geographically diverse disaster recovery.
“The VA needed to transform into a 21st century organization that could enable employees to collaborate more effectively,” said U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services senior vice president and general manager, Marilyn Crouther. “Together with the VA and Microsoft, the HP team will modernize the VA’s communications infrastructure while lowering costs and setting the stage for other U.S. government agencies to enter the cloud era.”
The VA will use Microsoft Office 365 for Government, which features a separate community cloud, for email, shared calendars, instant messaging, and web and video conferencing. It also includes industry-leading applications for productivity and collaboration including cloud-based Office, Exchange, Lync and SharePoint.
The VA has worked with HP on some of the agency’s most critical initiatives, including multiple IT solutions with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT), for more than 13 years.
Read WashingtonExec’s interview with Marylin Crouther on her recent GovCon Awards Executive of the Year Nomination.
