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AWS scores same Oz gov sec creds as Azure
Welcome to the cloud, where competitive advantage lasts a whole day
Microsoft yesterday pressed the ON button for Azure Australia, and one of the things the Redmondian outpost was keen to point out was that it was the only cloud in Australia to have earned the Australian federal government's Industry Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) certification.
IRAP is run by Australia's sigint agency, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), and is pretty much the same as the USA's Fedramp cert. Those who score an IRAP tick are allowed to store non-classified government data.
That's obviously an important thing for a global cloud provider's antipodean branch to achieve, given that data sovereignty concerns are so often cited as the prime reason the likes of Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) bother to build bit barns down under.
Little wonder, then, that AWS has just announced that it, too, has jumped through all the IRAP hoops and now has a new letter [PDF] attesting to the fact with which to adorn its lobby.
Microsoft's competitive advantage, at least with government clients, therefore lasted one whole day of Azure Australia's official operations.
Welcome to the cloud, Microsoft Australia, isn't it fun to have competitive advantage last a whole day? ®