14 DAY TRIAL // On Wednesday, May 30th, 2012, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced the release of new cloud products and features designed for government customers in the United States.
One of them is Office 365 for Government, specifically tailored to provide customers with the features and reliability they require.
The new Office 365 for Government arrives as a multi-tenant service destined to provide storage of US government data in a segregated community cloud.
The service will bring along all the productivity and collaboration capabilities that customers of other Office 365 offerings from Microsoft benefit from today.
Among these, we can count access to services such as Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Professional Plus.
Those customers who would like to learn more on how they can explore the service are advised to contact their Microsoft representative for that, Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office Division, notes in a blog post.
Additionally, the software company announced that it is also working on offering new security and privacy features in Office 365, in addition to the wide range of such capabilities that the service already has to offer.
“Today, Office 365 supports the most rigorous global and regional standards such as ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, EU Safe Harbor, EU Model Clauses, the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the US Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA),” Koenigsbauer notes.
Moving forth, Microsoft is looking into adding support for IPv6 in Office 365 for Government by September this year, which should help it meet the evolving needs of its customers.
On top of that, the company is seeking to start offering support for Criminal Justice Information Security (CJIS) policies in the near future. In the coming months, Microsoft will be working together with government customers on these initiatives, Koenigsbauer concluded.