NASPO ValuePoint Announces The First Master Agreement Awards Of The Cloud Solutions Multi-State Cooperative Procurement

The request for proposal, issued by the State of Utah on behalf of 36 states, resulted in competitive awards granted to 38 cloud solution providers.

Lexington, KY /PRNewswire/ - NASPO ValuePoint, an organization that provides the highest standard of excellence in public cooperative contracting, today announced the first master agreement awards of the Cloud Solutions multi-state cooperative procurement. The request for proposal, developed and led by the State of Utah and a sourcing team of state procurement and IT professionals from eight states, resulted in competitive awards granted to 38 cloud service providers. Douglas Richins, NASPO ValuePoint's Chief Executive Officer said, "The success of this groundbreaking procurement is in large measure due to the excellent leadership by the State of Utah, the dedication of a very talented group of state procurement and IT professionals on the sourcing team, and collaboration with state CIOs."

Douglas Richins described the contracts as "covering a full range of cloud solutions that help public entities quickly access the benefits of reliable and secure cloud services for use to serve residents." The awards cover all software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) models as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Chris Hughes, Assistant Director for the Utah Division of Purchasing and General Services and Procurement Lead, described the new cloud portfolio as including "a very broad range of services from cloud-based phone systems, unified communications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules, desktop as a service, programs to combat fraud, waste and abuse, data analytics and security as a service to application development in PaaS and cloud hosting services, combining IaaS with a range of managed services and system integration to deliver secure and reliable computing and storage infrastructure to name some of the cloud solutions that will be available."

Nelson Moe, Chief Information Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of the states participating in the multi-state procurement, said, "These contracts developed by the State of Utah and NASPO ValuePoint will help governments become more agile in their deployment of technology solutions to reduce costs and improve services for our taxpayers; and, because the cloud providers will be refreshed every two years, the cloud solutions will remain up-to-date."

The multi-state cloud acquisition offers an unparalleled range of choices to help state and local governments improve IT service delivery through reliable and secure cloud-based solutions. Michael DeAngelo, Washington State Deputy Chief Information Officer and one of the CIO advisors for the procurement, said, "This new cloud solutions marketplace represents a major leap forward in enabling governments to partner with cloud providers to more effectively deliver services to citizens."

Specifically designed for government cloud acquisition, the request for proposal uses the Cloud Security Alliance's Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ), Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) and the Security Trust and Assurance Registry to help states assess security and data controls in cloud applications. Elayne Starkey, Delaware Chief Information Security Officer, said, "Sending sensitive government data to the cloud can be a scary proposition. These contracts meet a critical need within the government sector by providing a mechanism for state and local governments to leverage cloud solutions and ensure that potential cloud vendors meet data security and protection requirements."

Daniele Catteddu, Chief Technology Officer for the Cloud Security Alliance, described, "The approach the State of Utah took to the address cloud security is exactly the one that CSA has envisioned when CCM and CAIQ were initially created. Now that STARWatch is under development, we are continuing on with that vision in providing standard support for facilitating the cloud services selection and procurement. We believe that the State of Utah is adopting a very effective way to ensure that the appropriate security controls are in place for the needs of the states who will use the contracts."

State and local governments may begin using these master awards as participating addendums are signed between the state and a cloud solutions provider. Participating addendums, award documents, the request for proposal, service summaries, contracts, key contacts, and more are posted on the NASPO ValuePoint web siteas the master agreements are executed by the State of Utah.

For more information, please contact Dugan Petty, NASPO ValuePoint, Education and Outreach Coordinator for Information Communications and Technology at DPetty@NASPOValuePoint.org.

About NASPO ValuePoint
The NASPO ValuePoint Cooperative Purchasing Organization (formerly WSCA-NASPO) provides the highest standard of excellence in public cooperative contracting. By leveraging the leadership and expertise of all states with the purchasing power of their public entities, NASPO ValuePoint delivers the best value, most reliable, competitively-sourced contracts. Since 1993 NASPO ValuePoint or its predecessor has been the cooperative purchasing arm of NASPO (the National Association of State Procurement Officials) encouraging, fostering, and guiding the nation's most significant public contract cooperative. NASPO ValuePoint is a unified, nationally-focused cooperative aggregating the demand of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the organized United States territories, their political subdivisions, and other eligible entities, spurring the best value, innovation, and competition in the marketplace.