Amazon Web Services is to open up a new cloud region that’ll be dedicated to delivering services for the US government.
The AWS GovCloud will sit in the US-East Region and is expected to open in 2018.
The thinking behind the move according to AWS is that the: “Region will provide customers with added redundancy, data durability, and resiliency, and will also provide additional options for disaster recovery,” wrote AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr.
AWS GovCloud US-East will join the US-West version of the same region, will be isolated and meet US government compliance requirements such as: International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), NIST standards, Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Moderate and High, Department of Defense Impact Levels 2-4, DFARs, IRS1075, and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS).
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AWS typically makes decisions that are driven by customer demand, so the decision to open a US-East cloud region has probably been based off a desire from government organisations wanting access to AWS services in their region.
The public cloud giant launched its GovCloud program in 2011 as a way to tap into the government sector by providing a facility that could meet all of its strict security and regulatory demands.
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The second region isn’t open to the general public and the company has said that it won’t add to the overall capacity of GovCloud, instead it will give government agencies the ability to operate across multiple regions.
Barr said: “These organizations are able to enjoy the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of public cloud while benefiting from the isolation and data protection offered by a region designed and built to meet their regulatory needs and to help them to meet their compliance requirements.”
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Already using the AWS GovCloud service are the likes of the Department of Veterans Affairs, General Services Administration, NASA JPL, United States Air Force, and the United States Department of Justice, on the Federal Government side.
