The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced it is moving to a cloud-based unified messaging technology after awarding a three-year $11.5 million contract to Earth Resources Technology on Thursday.
Earth Resources Technologies, Inc., based in Laurel, Md., will deliver “Google Apps for Government” in partnership with Google, Unisys and Tempus Nova. The new service will be operational by the end of the year.
The agency-wide transition will modernize e-mail and calendar infrastructure, integrate collaborative tools and facilitate synchronization with mobile devices to better support NOAA’s mission and its nationwide workforce, the agency said.
“The cost to the taxpayer will be 50 percent less than an in-house solution,” said NOAA Chief Information Officer Joseph Klimavicz. “As the new standard, cloud computing has great value allowing us to ramp up quickly, avoid redundancy and provide new services and capabilities to large groups of customers.”
He continued, “NOAA personnel are located coast to coast, on the oceans and in the air. This system will allow them to share information and strengthen collaborative productivity. As a cutting edge science agency, we are looking forward to bringing up-to-the-minute workplace technologies to our personnel.”
