CenturyLink Lands $1.1M FCC Cloud Hosting Contract

CenturyLink has scored a big win in the federal government space. The telecommunications company, through its Savvis Federal Systems subsidiary, has signed a three-year cloud hosting contract with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that is valued at approximately $1.1 million.

Through the agreement, the company will manage scalable, public cloud hosting services for the FCC, including www.fcc.gov, myfcc.gov and other domains and websites. Basically, the contract forges an agreement whereby CenturyLink will provide the FCC with IaaS services, but it also includes migration of the existing website infrastructure to a CenturyLink cloud data center.

“CenturyLink is eager to leverage its extensive cloud hosting product portfolio to support the FCC’s many missions, including the commission’s efforts to encourage new technologies to flourish,” said Diana Gowen, CenturyLink Public Sector senior vice president and general manager, in a prepared statement.

This isn’t CenturyLink’s first dealing with the FCC. Last year, CenturyLink won two “task orders” to provide WAN services and Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Services (MTIPS) to the FCC, although this marks the first truly cloud play for the service provider.

CenturyLink has been building out its cloud offerings recently, including making a few key acquisitions like that of AppFog, which added PaaS capabilities to CenturyLink’s Savvis Cloud. Additionally, CenturyLink and Savvis have expanded their private cloud capabilities and cloud data center services.

Scoring a major government contract is a good step for CenturyLink, and even though many other cloud providers may not have the resources or manpower to win such contracts, it does provide perspective and hope to those building on their cloud practices. More opportunities will be forthcoming over the next several months and years, and cloud services providers and channel partners are poised to capitalize on those opportunities.