Microsoft's hosted apps earn federal certification

21.04.2011
Microsoft said on Wednesday that its BPOS-Federal service has received an important certification that allows federal organizations to use the service.

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is a set of services that includes Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online.

The service under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), which established a stringent security standard that some federal agencies must require their vendors to comply with.

Microsoft's certification will allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture to migrate its 120,000 workers to BPOS-Federal and means that other federal agencies can also choose to use the service. The USDA announced late last year that it planned to start using the hosted BPOS offering.

Microsoft said it also plans to pursue FISMA certification for Office 365, a new hosted suite of products that is scheduled to launch soon.

FISMA certification has been at the heart of a war of words between Microsoft and Google. Last week, about its hosted Apps for Government being FISMA certified. Microsoft pointed to recently released court documents in which the U.S. Department of Justice said that although Google widely markets the service as having FISMA certification, in fact it doesn't.