Microsoft secured a big cloud contract win with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday in its latest cat-and-mouse play with rival Google to score lucrative deals with government bodies Stateside.

Just last week, Google scooped up 17,000 government drones from the US General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a five-year, $6.7m contract that was handed to Unisys Corp.

But Microsoft's win on Wednesday eclipses Google's latest effort. The software giant inked a deal that covers 120,000 USDA workers whose systems will be migrated to Microsoft's online versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications over the next month.

"USDA's IT modernisation will allow us to streamline our operations and help us use taxpayer dollars more efficiently. With a focused cloud roadmap, we saw a clear opportunity to achieve our cost savings and consolidation goals, and tap into the promise of the cloud," said USDA CIO Chris Smith.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

To date, USDA staff have been using 21 different email systems across the department's office locations.

Microsoft said that it has 500 state and local governments on its cloud computing books, but the USDA deal is significant because it is the first federal agency to have signed up to the company's online offerings.

Source: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/12/09/usda_signs_microsoft_cloud_contract/