Army announces $250m cloud services contract.

• Position: CLOUD COMPUTING - Brief article

After debating how to create network of data centers cross the country for more than three years, the U.S. Army has opted to purchase private cloud services from eight different vendors. According to Federal News Radio, those contractors will provide enterprise cloud computing services under a five-year, $250-million contract.

This is the Army's first cloud contract, and it hopes to reduce its costs through server consolidation and the use of fixed data centers. Under the deal, Criterion Systems, General Dynamics One Source, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services, HP Enterprise, IBM, Lockheed Martin, MicroTech, and...