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Recently, TMCnet reported that Microsoft (News - Alert) has scored another big win as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has subscribed to Office 365 under a four year, $9.8 million contract. The company is working with Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) to deploy the cloud-based collaboration and communications suite to around 25,000 EPA employees.

While it's often taken for granted that Microsoft is the last word in terms of productivity software, recent competition from the likes of Google Docs has made it more crucial than ever that Microsoft secure big contracts like this newly inked one for Office 365. It may not seem like Google (News - Alert) Docs could hold a candle to the experience that Microsoft brings to the table, but the cloud-based suite actually had a lot to do with the creation of Office 365.

The EPA is adopting Office 365 to replace IBM's (News - Alert) Lotus Notes e-mail software, along with a handful of other IBM Lotus collaboration applications which made up the bulk of the agency's productivity software. Lockheed Martin has provided IT services for the EPA for 35 years and, as such, is the obvious choice to manage the migration to Office 365. The company will also provide engineering and ongoing integration services and expects to complete the primary e-mail migration by early next year.

Office 365 for Government includes e-mail, calendar, scheduling and collaboration applications and stores data in a segregated cloud community for added security. Further, the cloud-based multi-tenant applications will save the EPA somewhere around $12 million in energy costs during the contract period, a huge advantage of this recent migration.

"There is tremendous potential in the cloud, not only for transforming the way government employees work, but also for helping agencies meet their environmental and energy efficiency goals," said Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal, in a statement.

For Microsoft, this strategic alliance is already proving to be yet another significant step toward beating out its competitors in order to retain its spot at the top.