US state moves to Microsoft cloud

Microsoft has claimed a private cloud deal covering every agency within the US State of Minnesota, boosting the email capacity for users from a tight 100 MB to 5 GB.

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which suffered several outages last month, will deliver agencies' unified communications, email, instant messaging and web collaboration requirements.

Despite the outages, Minnesota's State Chief Information Officer CIO Gopal Khanna was confident that the cloud service would improve its security credentials.

"The superior architecture of the applications and the state-of-the-art physical security of Microsoft's facility increases data security several fold, providing an instant upgrade to the State's security profile," he said in a statement.

The state's communications cloud would be housed in a "dedicated" Microsoft environment and delivered through the state's network, he said.

Local governments, cities, counties and educational institutions would also be able to participate in the agreement.

The deal excluded the state's "critical communications tools", it said.