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The Digital Agency has announced a policy to ease the selection requirements for providers of government clouds (government clouds) shared by the government and local governments.

Government cloud refers to a common infrastructure of cloud services used by the government and local governments. Called the government cloud, the government has set a goal to make systems related to 20 mission-critical tasks handled by municipalities, such as taxes and national pensions, available on the government cloud by the end of fiscal 2025.

The current rules, which require a single company to meet approximately 330 requirements, will be revised to allow for participation by a coalition of companies. This may make it easier for domestic companies to enter government cloud services that rely on foreign capital.

Until now, there have never been many businesses that can satisfy the wide variety of selection requirements on their own. In the 2022 public offering, cloud services from US companies that meet technical requirements such as security and business continuity have demonstrated their presence. In addition to Amazon Web Services (AWS), there are only four companies: Google, Microsoft Japan, and Oracle Japan. selected.

Domestic companies are unable to meet the requirements due to the scale of their business and the nature of their services. Particular hurdles include building a system to provide operational support from system development, using multiple data centers, and providing a development environment where artificial intelligence (AI) can perform machine learning.

Only giant IT (information technology) companies, known as “hyperscalers” such as AWS and Google, are able to achieve this on their own.

The agency is expected to announce new selection requirements for government cloud providers and start public offerings as early as August. The selected businesses will be allowed to provide services jointly with other companies as long as they are responsible for core technologies such as data management and authentication while maintaining most of the current items in the new requirements.

The selection of a government cloud provider is expected to be decided in late October.

Background of Easing Selection Requirements

The background behind this easing of selection requirements is

“We should review the selection criteria for cloud service providers that store and provide government cloud services.

and “the selection criteria for cloud service providers that store and provide government cloud services should be reviewed. It is extremely likely that companies like Sakura Internet and Internet Initiative Japan will seize this new opportunity to enter the domestic cloud market.

Despite these amendments, however, the Digital Agency stated that the right of municipalities to select providers will be maintained. In other words, the changes that the amendments will bring to the actual selection process may only be limited.

Many cloud service providers are requesting joint participation in the government cloud by multiple companies. The results of the selection process after the requirements are eased are likely to attract much anticipation and attention.