HP, Northrop Grumman Awarded Army Private Cloud Contracts

Tech industry gaint HP (NYSE: HPQ) and prominent defense contractor Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) both announced they have been selected to provide the Department of Defense with enterprise cloud services under the U.S. Army Private Cloud Contract (APC2).

The Army intends to use the APC2 to consolidate its data centers by building a secure private cloud with industry help. The APC2 has a $249 million ceiling with a potential five-year length, and divides cloud computing services into two “suites,” both of which HP will contribute to under the contract. The first suite provides cloud access to commercial and government buildings with the goal of reducing costs. The second suite will employ HP PODS, or Performance-Optimized Data Centers, which are mobile, “containerized” data centers designed for field operations or temporary increases in cloud computing power.

“A highly flexible and innovative contract, along with reliability and scalability for long-term needs, is important for the Army and our federal clients,” said Marilyn Crouther, HP SVP, U.S. Public Sector, in a prepared statement. “As a leader in data center outsourcing with extensive experience with the Army and Department of Defense, HP is uniquely qualified to partner with the Army in achieving its IT objectives in both fixed and deployed environments.”

Northrop Grunman, meanwhile, was selected to compete for the fixed facility order awards for APC2 and its services will consist of enabling the Army’s personnel to have global information access and to help the Army employ greater computing power. These include providing Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service operations hosted via contractor-owned and operated models, government-owned/contractor-operated models and hybrid-cloud models.

“Northrop Grumman’s cloud computing solutions have been optimized to address the unique mission and cybersecurity requirements of our warfighters while providing the efficiency benefits of cloud operations,” said Karen Williams, VP of the Defense Technologies Division at Northrop Grumman, in a prepared statement. “Through the APC2 contract Northrop Grumman will support the Army and Department of Defense’s movement to the cloud.”