AT&T to offer cloud-based storage to federal government agencies

AT&T (NYSE: T) on Thursday was granted an Authority to Operate (ATO) for its Synaptic Storage as a Service (SSaaS) from the General Services Administration (GSA), allowing it to offer cloud storage services to federal agencies.

Federal agencies will now be able to purchase AT&T's cloud storage services, offered from its U.S.-based Internet Data Centers (IDCs), through the GSA Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Blanket Purchase Agreement.

Agencies that purchase the telco's SSaaS product will be able to store and distribute data on-demand. A key feature of the new service is that customers can access and tweak their storage capabilities via a custom web-based portal.

AT&T already has a strong presence in the federal government as one of GSA's three Networx prime Universal contract holders. Its new storage service should also help agencies fulfill requirements of the Obama administration's "Cloud First" policy.

While meeting the "Cloud First" policy, the obvious concern for federal agencies adopting cloud services is, of course, security. AT&T addresses that need by supporting moderate level security controls under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

For more:
- see the release

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