Following an eight-month-long compliance-testing process, the US General Services Administration has deemed data center services provider Horizon and its partner EyakTek qualified to provide cloud-based infrastructure services to US federal agencies.

According to Horizon, the two partners became certified IaaS providers to the feds under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Horizon will provide data center infrastructure and EyakTek will act as the technology integrator.

Horizon CEO Lance Black said: "With this (authority to operate), Horizon's purpose built cloud is officially open for government business, and Horizon and EyakTek are ready to take the lead in helping federal agencies save money by accessing the incredible potential of our highly secure, cloud-based services."

The cloud services will be accessible through the government's online IT services procurement portal Apps.gov, Black told DatacenterDynamics in March.

Horizon and EyakTek are joining Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Dell, Carpathia, Savvis and Verizon, among others, as certified federal IaaS providers.

To receive the authority to operate, Horizon's IaaS offering called vStructure went through a lengthy assessment and authorization process that consisted of scrutiny of more than 750 control points to ensure the solution was compliant with government security standards for business continuity and disaster recovery.

"The government's (assessment and authorization) process is a major test for any system, requiring thirty times the testing and validation that is required in a typical commercial audit," Black said.

Federal focus on cloud-based services is part of a 25-point plan to reform government IT White House CIO Vivek Kundra's office released in December 2010. The plan also includes closing about 800 federal data centers by 2015.

Kundra kicked off the reform initiative in September 2009 and in June of this year the White House announced that he will be leaving his post for a fellowship at Harvard University.