Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Google Sues Agency Over Microsoft-Only Cloud Deal

IDG News Service - Google ( GOOG ) and a reseller of its products have filed a legal case against the U.S. Department of the Interior after the group solicited bids for cloud-based e-mail and messaging services naming that bidders contingency use Microsoft ( MSFT ) products.

Google and Ohio-based reseller Onix Networking filed the legal case against the DOI Friday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The contract, for up to US$59.3 million over 5 years, tells bidders they contingency muster Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite-Federal (BPOS) package to broach the services.

The Microsoft necessity is "unduly limiting of competition" and violates sovereign constrictive law, Google and Onix mentioned in their complaint. The DOI, notwithstanding earnest to look at alternatives to the Microsoft package, released an Aug. 30 solicit for bids forming "a sole-source buying that is capricious and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and instead dead against to law," the censure said.

Google employees met with DOI officials to speak about their competing Google Apps product in mid-2009, the censure said. In April of this year, two DOI officials told Google that its products did not encounter the safety mandate of the agency. The two group officials declined to speak about the DOI's safety mandate or examination the safety of Google's products, the censure said.

The DOI's mandate is to stipulate mention that the products used contingency accede with safety mandate in the U.S. Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the Google/Onix censure said. Microsoft's BPOS-Federal product is not nonetheless FISMA-certified, whilst Google's Apps for Government is, the censure added.

Microsoft voiced the BPOS-Federal product in February . The firm mentioned it programmed to have FISMA acceptance by the finish of this year.

The DOI gritty that Microsoft's apartment was the "only blurb product that satisfies every requirement" identified by the agency, the DOI mentioned in its fact for a supposed paltry source contract. "Based on ... endless marketplace research, the subdepartment gritty that although many companies can give messaging services in general, they possibly cannot give services that residence the difficulty of messaging mandate inside of DOI, or they could not encounter the grade of safety compulsory by DOI," the group mentioned in papers fortifying the preference of Microsoft products.

BPOS-Federal is a new product with no publicly identified customers and no case studies from sovereign supervision users, Google's censure said. Microsoft's BPOS-Standard product had service outages in Aug and September, the censure added.

The DOI's open affairs office did not right away reply to a solicit for explanation about the lawsuit.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom process in the U.S. supervision for The IDG News Service . Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail residence is grant_gross@idg.com.

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