Growth and Adoption of AWS GovCloud (US) for Mission-Critical Workloads

September 8, 2021: Amazon Elasticsearch Service has been renamed to Amazon OpenSearch Service. See details.

AWS GovCloud (US) gives AWS customers a place to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the AWS Cloud. It is an isolated AWS Region, subject to FedRAMP High and Moderate baselines, and it allows customers to host sensitive Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and all types of regulated workloads. AWS GovCloud (US) Region launched in 2011, and since then we have been focused on driving innovation and access to new services in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region for our public sector customers.

Since January, we have launched over 80 services and features. This includes some of our customers’ most requested AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Container Service, AWS Storage Gateway, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, AWS CloudHSM, Amazon Polly, Inspector, Amazon Aurora, and the new AWS Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Marketplace for AWS GovCloud (US) where customers can now find, buy, and deploy API and SaaS products.

Specifically for machine learning and artificial intelligence, AWS GovCloud (US) has expanded its offerings to include Amazon Translate, Amazon Rekognition and Rekognition Video, and Amazon Polly. The Region has also seen significant infrastructure expansion, including the launch of the third Availability Zone for AWS GovCloud (US) and the AWS GovCloud (US-East) Region that will open in the second half of this year.

This growth is important for customers to move mission-critical workloads to the cloud, while also addressing compliance. Organizations are able to enjoy the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of commercial cloud while benefiting from the isolation and data protection offered by a region designed and built to meet their regulatory needs and their compliance requirements.

At the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Department of Treasury and Department of Homeland Security will share how they use AWS GovCloud (US) at every stage of their cloud journey. The U.S. Department of Treasury will discuss how they modernized two significant public programs to drive digital transformation within their most critical mission systems. The Department of Homeland Security will discuss how they are using AWS GovCloud (US) for FISMA High workloads in the cloud.

Additionally, the Summit brought more AWS GovCloud (US) news to the stage. VMware announced that VMware Cloud on AWS, a hybrid cloud service that will enable US public sector agencies to reap the benefits of increased agility and robust security, will be available in AWS GovCloud (US). This cloud service was designed to improve IT efficiency and help lower costs as agencies transition to the cloud by enabling them to deploy and run applications on familiar VMware software-defined data center software on AWS GovCloud (US). VMware Cloud on AWS in AWS GovCloud (US) will provide government organizations with a fast and seamless onramp to the cloud so that they can enhance services immediately, not only for their constituents, but also for their employees.

Learn more about AWS GovCloud (US).

Learn more about our AWS Public Sector Summit sponsor VMware and how they support the mission of public sector agencies through IT.

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