US military men signed the contract for $617 million with Microsoft

US military men signed the contract for $617 million with Microsoft

The U.S. Department of Defense intends to save more than $100 million a year within the three-year license agreement signed with Microsoft and which became effective since January, 2013.

According to its conditions, the Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Agency on defense information systems (DISA) will obtain 2 million user licenses and official support of Microsoft, said in the official statement of department.

Contract amount was about $617 million. Economy of the U.S. Air Force, thanks to successful terms of the contract, will make about $50 million a year, and economy of U.S. Army – about $70 million annually. Economy of DISA will make about 10% for all duration of the agreement.

As it was already told above, in addition to considerable number of licenses of division of the Ministry of Defence will obtain from corporation service on individual conditions. "Nobody had such close access to our network yet", - David Devris said (David L. DeVries), the Chief information officer of the U.S. Department of Defense, characterizing terms of transaction.

Microsoft declared officially that the new contract integrates separate and free standing agreements in uniform before - Joint Enterprise Licensing Agreement (JELA) which consolidates the existing Enterprise Licensing Agreements (ELAs) of separate divisions of the ministry also in the uniform license agreement ELA that will provide finally cost reduction, standardization also will be improved by interaction between the agencies.

Microsoft also specified that the contract covers ensuring consolidation of data centers, joint work, information security, operability of mobile, cloud computing and big data. The corporation also stated that it conducts joint work with the Ministry of Defence over interaction of Windows 8 with the Army Golden Master and Air Force Standard Desktop Configuration systems, but it is not completed yet.

The contract will allow the ministry to use the following solutions of corporation: Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and Windows 8. Besides, department stated that it will use model of the agreement with Microsoft as a basis for contracts of this sort and with other vendors for the purpose of product development which at the same time meet standards of security and differ in flexibility and performance.