Level 3 Communications has added content delivery network (CDN) services to its offerings available to government agencies under a Washington Interagency Telecommunications System (WITS 3) contract. The contract provides negotiated prices for telecommunications services on behalf of all federal agencies operating within the National Capital Region (NCR), the company said.
Level 3's CDN services are cloud-based and are designed to help federal agencies battling budget pressures by reducing infrastructure costs and better support growing demands for managing big data.
Agencies will also be better able to comply with mandates issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Level 3 said. Mandates like the Cloud First Policy are geared toward transforming how agencies procure IT services by eliminating duplicative systems and applications, fragmented resources, and underutilized technology assets, by moving applications to the cloud. Level 3 says its CDN services can be implemented rapidly, enable more efficient use of resources and bring content closer to citizens.
The service additions also support compliance with the OMB's Open Government Directive to advance the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration between the government and citizens. Level 3's CDN services – delivered over the company's owned and operated network – allows agencies to enhance information-sharing tools like high-performing websites and video/audio streaming to achieve mandate objectives.
"As the only provider with its own CDN and IP backbone network, Level 3 enables agencies to deliver high-quality, high-bandwidth content - from video to large file libraries. Content is delivered to locations across the globe quickly, reliably and in a way that scales to meet unpredictable demand without the burden of owning costly infrastructure," said Edward Morche, senior vice president of Level 3's government markets group. "The need for that kind of enhanced performance and speed to quickly react to our customers' demands can keep agencies operating efficiently and transparently while taking full advantage of the benefits of cloud-based services over the WITS 3 contract."
