Yesterday, Microsoft announced a number of new Azure capabilities for government. First of all, Microsoft is expanding its FedRAMP Moderate coverage for its public cloud regions. There are about 50 services available under this coverage and later this year, Microsoft will improve the coverage to FedRAMP High. Microsoft also mentioned that it will continue to get more services at both FedRAMP Moderate and FedRAMP High impact levels.

In March this year, Microsoft announced two new regions for Secret classified data. Azure Government Secret Regions are designed and built specifically to support government agencies and partners who have Secret classified data workloads. Microsoft yesterday announced that these new regions will be available by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

Other capabilities announced for government customers include:

• Azure Data Box, Data Box Edge, and Data Box Heavy available for government customers
• To help government agencies take advantage of cloud services rapidly and with minimal friction, we are announcing Azure Reservations now available for Azure Government. Azure Reservations enable you to budget and forecast more easily with up-front payment for one and three-year terms.
• Microsoft and SAP are partnering to bring the power of SAP HANA to federal government and regulated industry customers.
• L3 Technologies has chosen Azure Government as its primary cloud platform for expanding data analytics capabilities, optimizing IT operations and delivering greater value to its customers.
• Booz Allen Hamilton is partnering with Microsoft to change the paradigm for defense and intelligence customers.
• Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Edge extended offline, Azure IoT Central, Azure Sphere preview and Azure Stack are also coming to Azure Government customers