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As more companies within every industry are realizing the many benefits associated with leveraging Office 365, an intuitive cloud-based platform, such as increased efficiency, reduced costs and much better collaboration between geographically divided segments of an enterprise, HP Enterprise Services recently revealed it is now assisting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) utilize Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365 for Government.

In a five-year contract that is estimated at nearly $36 million, the department will gain access to an array of key e-mail and calendaring functionalities that will then in turn be used by the VA’s user base of approximately 600,000.

“VA is moving to cloud-based e-mail and collaboration as part of a broader effort to leverage emerging technologies to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and, most importantly, improve service delivery to our nation’s veterans,” said Charles De Sanno, executive director, Enterprise Systems Engineering, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in a statement.

This newly inked agreement falls under the Veterans Administration Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (VA T4) program, which was developed in order to keep the organization at the forefront of all next generation technology. HP will be in charge of migrating the organization seamlessly to Office 365, in a move that will surely ramp up reliability, security, privacy and compliance.

According to a recent article, “Moving to the cloud enables the VA to fulfill the Cloud-First federal mandate while anticipating improved employee productivity and collaboration and reduced costs.”

When leveraging this robust offering, the VA will be able to take advantage of instant messaging as well as both Web and video conferencing. The suite also includes Exchange, Lync and SharePoint.

“The VA needed to transform into a 21st century organization that could enable employees to collaborate more effectively,” added Marilyn Crouther, senior vice president and general manager, U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services. “Together with the VA and Microsoft , the HP team will modernize the VA’s communications infrastructure while lowering costs and setting the stage for other U.S. government agencies to enter the cloud era.”

This story is not actually the first of its kind, as earlier this month headlines were made when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency transitioned to Office 365 when it inked a four year, $9.8 million contract. The company will be working on this project in conjunction with Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) to enable 25,000 EPA employees to take advantage of this offering right away.

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