Smartronix Announces the Launch of Treasury.gov Community Cloud Architecture
WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwire) -- 01/10/11 -- Smartronix is proud to announce its support of the launch of the new Treasury.gov web site and the migration of four other Treasury websites (SIGTARP.gov, MyMoney.gov, TIGTA.gov, and IRSOversightBoard.treasury.gov) to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This marks the first time a cabinet level agency has moved its web sites to AWS.
The Treasury.gov re-design contract was awarded to Smartronix in June of 2010. Team Smartronix, which consists of Smartronix, Synteractive, TMP Government, and KPMG, with close collaboration from Microsoft and AWS, also developed the successful Recovery.gov 2.0 web site released last year. The team brings together visionary and creative industry experts in SharePoint, cloud computing, Web design, transparency, Open Government data, social collaboration, and emerging Web technologies.
"We are excited to be part of this redesign of Treasury's primary web presence," stated Smartronix CTO Robert Groat. "This site ushers in an era of new capabilities for Treasury and meets several of the Administration's mandates for use of cloud computing and Web 2.0 technologies."
"Amazon Web Services is proud to be the backbone for this strategic initiative at the US Treasury Department. It demonstrates a trend toward innovation in ways Government agencies are reducing costs and optimizing their IT services. Our work with the Smartronix team enables Treasury.gov to expand its cloud computing footprint and meet federal communication and publishing mandates by migrating additional Treasury websites to the AWS cloud," said Teresa Carlson, Vice President Global Public Sector, Amazon Web Services. "AWS provides a highly scalable computing infrastructure that enables organizations around the world to requisition compute power, storage, and other on-demand services in the cloud. We look forward to continue working with the Federal government as agencies look to improve technology efficiencies, save money and comply with the Federal Cloud First Initiative."
The new site supports the communications, publishing requirements, and strategic initiatives of the Department of the Treasury and provides increased access to Treasury resources and assets. Developed on a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform, running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and accelerated by the Akamai Content Delivery Network, the new Treasury.gov takes advantage of a powerful, secure infrastructure and a flexible enterprise search and content management system.
The solution provides a robust workflow and collaboration capability that empowers over a hundred Treasury content owners to make updates at the individual office level as opposed to relying on a centralized departmental web team. This marks a significant departure from the previous content management process. This delegation of content ownership enables Treasury to provide more timely and relevant information to its constituents.
The platform also enables advanced dynamic data visualizations based on the Open Data Protocol (OData) to further the way that vital data is shared across the agency and its constituency.
"The new Treasury capabilities are a shining example of how SharePoint 2010 can be leveraged to meet the web site requirements of large Agencies. This is the largest SharePoint 2010 implementation in the federal government and makes use of several powerful new features," stated Dean Halstead of Microsoft who was instrumental in providing site feedback throughout the design process. Dean also noted that the cloud based infrastructure uses several other Microsoft technologies including Systems Center Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and various security solutions.
Groat states, "We recognized that Treasury could substantially benefit from the new metadata services in SharePoint 2010. Treasury has tens of thousands of pages and files. By using the metadata features we are able to dynamically display relevant content on pages throughout the site. The content tagging not only improves page relevance but also enables more robust search and filtering capabilities."
Built with a unique, user-centric approach, the new Treasury.gov has the modern capabilities expected in such a critical, public-facing Web channel and allows the agency to better communicate with the public in a more open and transparent manner. New capabilities include integration with social networking tools such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter. The site also introduces Web 2.0 capabilities, faceted search, and multi-media resources. Visitors can more easily find information of interest to them as opposed to sifting through data presented according to a non-intuitive organizational structure. This site also marks the first time that the Treasury department has published a blog -- cleverly named "Treasury Notes."
Smartronix chose Akamai's Content Delivery Network to accelerate the performance of the site and help protect against DDoS attacks. Smartronix lead security architect, Anthony Vultaggio, stated that the Akamai SiteShield service provided significant capabilities in being able to cloak the cloud infrastructure from direct public access. Tom Ruff, VP of Akamai's Public Sector confirmed, "The new Treasury.gov and several other websites hosted on the Treasury Community Cloud architecture are benefiting from the advanced Akamai capabilities. We think this is a viable blueprint for Agencies looking to host a secure, scalable web presence in the cloud."
"The new Treasury.gov website is a major step forward in our efforts to improve the way citizens access the wealth of data and information Treasury produces on a day-to-day basis," said Dan Tangherlini, Treasury Assistant Secretary for Management, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Performance Officer.
"Treasury's decision to move its flagship site to a public cloud infrastructure reflects the Administration's commitment to closing the IT gap between the public and private sectors by leveraging the power of technology," said Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer. "Use of cloud computing increases cost effectiveness, improves efficiency and provides greater flexibility, as the private industry sector has proven. This is exactly the kind of game-changing technology required to do more with less."
Please visit http://www.treasury.gov
Smartronix is a global professional solutions provider specializing in Network Operations, Cyber Security, Enterprise Software Solutions, Mission Focused Engineering, and Health IT. Smartronix is headquartered in Hollywood, Maryland with operating offices in Virginia (3), North Carolina, Florida (2), Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, and Arizona, with more than 600 employees throughout the United States and at strategic locations in Germany, Honduras, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines. The company has been recognized as the Best Technology Consulting Firm to Work For by Vault, an Employer of Choice by Northern Virginia Family Service, and as one of the 50 fastest-growing companies in the Greater Washington D.C. area and one of the top 500 nationally as ranked by Washington Post and Inc 500 media, respectively.
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