VMware Joins with Carpathia to Gain U.S. Cloud Approval 

Add VMware and well-connected partner Carpathia, the hybrid cloud services specialist with extensive government hosting contracts, to the growing list of vendors authorized to provide cloud services to federal agencies.

The partners said they have received provisional authority to offer cloud services to U.S. government agencies under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP.

Carpathia, Palo Alto, Calif., said this week it would join with VMware to offer VMware's vCloud Government Service, described as an infrastructure-as-a-service hybrid cloud offering. The service is based on VMware's vSphere platform and would be provided by Carpathia, which specializes in trusted cloud hosting services that comply with federal security requirements.

FedRAMP approval means the partners are eligible to offer cloud services to all federal agencies and U.S. military services as well as the legislative and judicial branches of government.

The partners join a growing list of cloud providers approved under the federal cloud certification program. VMware claimed it has a leg up on some competitors since much of the existing U.S. IT infrastructure uses VMware's virtualization technology. VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger noted in a statement that the VMware service hosted by Carpathia would "enable agencies to extend their infrastructure to the cloud by leveraging the technology and personnel investments they have already made."

The vCloud Government Service includes VMware NSX network and security virtualization along with vMotion for migrating data and storage, the partners said. NSX is intended to allow government users to extend networks across public and private clouds as a way of provisioning applications while maintaining network security.

Carpathia's Government Solutions unit is a long time supplier of managed hosted services to government agencies. Along with FedRAMP, its cloud hosting services also comply with federal security rules, including the Federal Information Security Management Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act designed to ensure the privacy of patients' medical records.

Carpathia already operates secure datacenters that host government cloud services. It's IBX Vault, which the company said is located 29 miles from the White House, offers secure cloud services and is connected to other Washington, DC, metropolitan area datacenters via a secure, private fiber link.

The company said it is already providing secure networking services to more than 50 civilian, military and intelligence agencies.

FedRAMP approval for VMware comes as large customers like the Defense Department are reaching out to commercial cloud providers in an effort to jumpstart the sprawling agency's transition to the cloud.

Defense officials spearheading military cloud efforts recently told DoD's internal news service that the ability to host multiple defense applications on multiple virtual servers was one way to lower the cost of ownership.

DoD IT managers are attempting to scale up use of a new "collaboration service" that could leverage the security features of the military cloud. The challenge for these efforts will be finding ways to securely transfer these emerging applications to cloud platforms hosted by commercial vendors like VMware and Carpathia.