VMware earns FedRAMP High authorization in partnership with AWS

VMware has received a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High authorization for its VMware Cloud product.

VMware partnered with Amazon Web Services and leveraged its AWS GovCloud infrastructure to receive the authority to operate, making it easier for agencies across government to use its virtualization and multi-cloud offerings for sensitive workloads.

High is the most secure of three authorization levels that cloud service providers can achieve when seeking approval through FedRAMP. Each CSP is assigned one of three levels: low, medium, or high.

The U.S. Marshals Service sponsored VMware’s FedRAMP authorization process, which began in March of 2019, according to the FedRAMP Marketplace.

Lynn Martin, vice president of government, education, and healthcare at VMware, touts VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud as a unified management system that allows government agencies to use any cloud and any app from any device.

“VMware Cloud helps government agencies address a myriad of business challenges as they shift to adopt multi-cloud solutions, helping them to meet the evolving needs of stakeholders and the public, comply with security regulations more easily, and lower total cost of ownership,” Martin told FedScoop in an emailed statement. “VMware cloud solutions can be a big part of this strategy by working across multiple clouds and giving agencies the choice, speed, and control they need to be successful. It’s the freedom of any cloud, with the simplicity of one.”

FedRAMP High baseline designates that VMware, with the support of AWS, can securely process the federal government’s most sensitive unclassified information. The new offering gives “agencies a simplified path to move their highly sensitive workloads to the cloud,” said Sandy Carter, vice president of partners and programs for AWS.“U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies from law enforcement and emergency services to financial and healthcare systems can now confidently leverage the best of VMware and AWS to more securely run their mission critical applications across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments to take full advantage of the cloud’s agility and cost savings.”