HP Rolls Out Government Flavor of Helion Private Cloud Services update from May 2014

HP announced a new set of cloud infrastructure services targeted at government agencies.

Helion Managed Private Cloud for Public Sector includes hardware, software and ongoing management services. Helion is HP's new $1 billion cloud services initiative that includes Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service offerings.

The U.S. federal government is a major opportunity for cloud service providers because federal agencies are mandated to use cloud instead of in-house infrastructure whenever possible. HP's announcement also comes at a time when agencies are faced with a looming deadline for ensuring all cloud service providers they contract with are FedRAMP-compliant. HP is one of only 12 providers that have been FedRAMP-certified.

FedRAMP is a pre-screening program for cloud providers to ensure their infrastructure meets the government's security requirements. The deadline for all agencies to use only FedRAMP-compliant providers is June 5.

“With a robust hybrid portfolio of enterprise cloud services already in place for commercial clients, our priority has been making sure that they are available to meet government demands,” said Stacy Cleveland, director of global practices for HP's public sector enterprise services division.

HP's managed private cloud allows agencies to act as IT brokers by accessing a web-based portal to manage consumption and monitor resources, allowing charge back of costs to departments and business units.  The fully engineered solution provisions a cloud environment in either a client-owned or a third-party data center. The wider Helion initiative includes a roll-out of cloud services across 20 of HP's own data centers around the world over the next 18 months.

HP is no stranger to Federal procurement regulations and red tape management, and as such its Virtual Private Cloud has received a FedRAMP provisional Authority to Operate (pATO), which allows any agency to use HP's pATO and grant its own ATO without conducting duplicative assessments. It meets compliance needs for FedRAMP, FISMA high, HIPAA and the Defense Information System Agency Enterprise Cloud Service Broker (DISA ECSB) impact Level-5.

Amazon's GovCloud, IBM and Microsoft also have FedRAMP provisional authority, and Oracle earned it just last week.

The level 5 authorization from DISA allows HP Helion to host sensitive information systems, making an easy path for the cloud solutions to access defense and intel agency deals as well.