Azure Government – technology innovation shaping the future
From the state and local level to the largest federal agencies, U.S. Government customers are using Azure to transform how they meet the needs of citizens. We’re seeing strong growth on Microsoft Azure Government, the mission-critical cloud, delivering the latest innovation to over 7,000 U.S. Government customers and their partners. We remain highly focused on meeting the accelerating demand for cloud services that support the most stringent security and compliance requirements of our government customers.
Our customers serve in every federal cabinet agency and across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. We have supported over 500 million government authentications and every eight minutes we add a new 1 TB drive. Our growing ecosystem includes more than 500 offerings and 350+ partners in the marketplace, recently reaching 2.5M compute usage hours per month.
We are seeing continued momentum in utilizing the cloud for sensitive workloads with recent ATOs issued for the U.S. Air Force and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Air Force is rapidly transforming systems with a PaaS-first environment to deliver modern apps and exploit cloud scale and agility to reduce capital expenditures and more effectively focus resources on their mission. The FedRAMP High ATO for ICE brings critical cloud services such as identity, access, and deep learning to support their mission.
As we move forward, we are continuing to add new features and services to Azure Government. At the Microsoft Government Tech Summit in Washington D.C. today, we announced Azure Government Secret regions for classified data, new and unique hybrid approaches to IT modernization with Azure Stack, and growing connectivity options with new ExpressRoute locations. We’re also releasing new capabilities to accelerate developer and IT productivity and efficiency with DevTest Labs, Logic Apps and Power BI embedded. Here’s more:
Expanding the mission-critical cloud with two new Azure Government Secret regions coming soon, enabled for data classified Secret. This announcement brings the number of dedicated government regions to a total of eight and expands Azure Government’s support across a broad spectrum of data classifications. With these new regions we’ll continue to deliver commercial-grade hyperscale cloud services with the highest availability, deepest compliance, and fastest innovation to advance the most critical of U.S. Government missions.
Microsoft Azure Stack, a game-changing hybrid solution coming soon to Azure Government, delivers consistency across on-premises environments and Azure. Agencies can continue to leverage their existing infrastructure and share data seamlessly across platforms, easily integrating with next-generation services and innovating rapidly.
For federal customers, Azure Stack provides a foundation for the intelligent edge and enables advanced services that can power the DoD’s tactical missions.
Azure Stack will integrate with Azure Government, enabling consistent connections to Azure Government across identity, subscription, billing, backup and disaster recovery, and the Azure Marketplace. Azure Stack will also enable government customers to seamlessly use and move amongst public, government-only, and on-premises cloud environments to rapidly respond to geopolitical developments and cybersecurity threats. Learn more about the Azure Stack integration in this blog.
Accelerating cloud capabilities for highly sensitive workloads with three new PaaS services, Azure Site Recovery, Backup and Azure App Service added to our DoD Impact Level 5 Provisional Authorization. Azure Government remains the only provider to deliver a hyperscale cloud that is authorized for DoD Impact Level 5 data for infrastructure, platform, and productivity services. Azure Government is serving every branch of the military and many of the combatant commands and defense agencies. We’ve also expanded FedRAMP authorized service coverage to include eight new services, including Azure App Service, Azure Functions and SQL Server Stretch DB. Government customers now have more options for building new applications, moving data from on-premises datacenters to the cloud, and scaling virtual machines while maintaining the highest compliance standards. Azure continues to offer the broadest compliance portfolio of any major cloud provider, with 72 certifications supported.
Two new ExpressRoute locations coming soon, will bring fast, reliable, private connectivity to government customers in San Antonio and Phoenix for a new total of 8 ExpressRoute locations that offer choice, security, reliability, high connection speeds, and low latency access to cloud resources. Customers can now use ExpressRoute Microsoft Peering to leverage Azure VPN for data exchange with confidence and integrity, and the ability to access Office 365 and all Azure PaaS services through Microsoft Peering. We have added key networking services such as VNet service endpoints for storage and SQL and Network Watcher for more secure building of applications and monitoring.
Faster, more efficient cloud development and IT management with new services coming soon, including Logic Apps and DevTest Labs to support rapid building and delivery of innovation, as well as agile development and DevOps with minimal organizational structure changes. DevTest Labs provides a self-service sandbox environment in Azure to quickly create environments while minimizing waste. This enables IT and empowers software teams to address modernization challenges and improve resource use. Logic Apps enhance productivity with rapid innovation and business processes automation, with common out-of-the-box connectors for Azure services, Office 365 and more.
Power BI Embedded is now available in Azure Government, offering built-in interactive visual analytics for your applications. New DV3 and EV3 VM sizes help you leverage more power from underlying hardware and harness greater performance, efficiency, and cost savings.
You can read more on these announcements on the Azure Government blog. Learn more about the Azure Stack integration in this blog. We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
To get started with Azure Government get your trial today!
Source: Azure Blog Feed