Everything’s Bigger in Texas: State Adopts Office 365 as Part of a State-Wide IT Modernization Strategy for More Than 100k Employees

Michael Donlan (Bellevue, WA) –

The Texas Department of Information Resources is adopting Office 365 for more than 100,000 employees in the largest state-wide deployment of email and collaboration services in the U.S.

The state will consolidate multiple systems in an effort to streamline and improve the state’s communication and collaboration capabilities across agencies and to help better serve the needs of its citizens. The move to the cloud offers significant savings in IT spending due to greater efficiencies and increased capacity, while providing employees with web conferencing, real-time collaboration and document and calendar sharing.

Office 365 also will help maintain the state’s compliance posture and high standards for security and privacy. Several agencies, including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Alcohol and Beverage Commission, Department of Insurance, Health and Human Services, and many others, require access to data that is subject to complex security and privacy regulations. Microsoft has made a contractual commitment to the Texas Department of Information Resources by signing the CJIS Security Addendum in addition to a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. As a result of this partnership, jurisdictions at all levels within the State of Texas, including cities and counties, will be able to take advantage of Office 365.

Microsoft is the industry leader in delivering cloud computing solutions with robust security, privacy and compliance features, and has years of experience working with governments at all levels. We’re committed to offering our customers the most flexible, secure and reliable cloud solutions in the industry.

Today, the State of Texas joins a rapidly growing list of state and local government customers that are taking advantage of the cost savings and efficiency of moving to the cloud with Microsoft, including the City of Chicago, City of San Francisco, the State of California and the State of Minnesota. To learn more about today’s news and what it means for the State, read the press announcement.

Michael Donlan is the VP of U.S. State and Local Government for Microsoft. This post originally appeared on the official Microsoft blog.

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