Strategic Communications Awarded Massachusetts ITS-88 Cloud Services Contract
Strategic Communications has been awarded the Massachusetts ITS-88 contract, a major statewide procurement vehicle for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and related cloud services. ITS-88 gives public sector organizations across the Commonwealth a streamlined path to cloud modernization.
This post covers what the contract includes, who it serves, and how Strategic Communications can help your organization take advantage of it.
What the ITS-88 Contract Covers
The contract is organized into three categories:
Public Cloud and Managed Services combines public cloud environments with comprehensive managed services — system administration, security monitoring, infrastructure architecture, and 24/7 support. The pairing ensures that public cloud deployments are continuously monitored and optimized.
Cloud Professional Services covers the consulting side of digital transformation: cloud migration, system implementation, environment management, and technical training. Organizations get access to certified cloud architects and engineers experienced in enterprise-level deployments.
Co-location and Private Cloud Services supports workloads that require dedicated hardware or specific security isolation, replicating the high availability and disaster recovery benefits of the public cloud within a controlled private environment.
Who Can Use It
ITS-88 is available to a broad range of Massachusetts public sector entities, including state agencies, cities, towns, public school districts, higher education institutions, and public hospitals.
Why It Matters
The contract is structured to make cloud adoption practical and financially sustainable for public organizations:
- Long-term stability. An initial term of seven years with an option to renew for seven more gives organizations the runway to plan and execute multi-year IT strategies.
- Elastic scaling. Computing resources scale up or down based on real-time demand, keeping critical public services online during traffic spikes.
- Pay-as-you-go billing. Entities pay only for what they use, eliminating large upfront hardware investments and making better use of taxpayer funds.
- Self-service provisioning. IT administrators can independently provision processing, storage, and network bandwidth, cutting deployment timelines significantly.
Compliance at a Glance
Massachusetts holds vendors to strict standards under ITS-88. All customer data must reside within the continental United States, with secondary disaster recovery facilities located at least 100 miles from primary data centers. Solutions must comply with EOTSS security policies, HIPAA, PCI regulations, Section 508 accessibility requirements, and WCAG 2.1 level AA. The contract also supports the Commonwealth's Net Zero 2050 goal by requiring sustainable business practices and energy-efficient infrastructure.
For organizations exploring generative AI, the contract includes provisions requiring that vendor models do not use entity data for public training without explicit written consent, and that all GenAI tools are tested for accuracy and bias.
How Strategic Communications Can Help
Our team brings deep public sector experience to four areas that align directly with the ITS-88 framework:
- Cloud migration and modernization to assess your current infrastructure, plan a phased transition, and build a cloud environment optimized for performance, cost, and compliance.
- Cybersecurity to protect sensitive public data with continuous monitoring, threat detection, and security architectures that meet Commonwealth and federal standards including HIPAA and PCI.
- Data analytics to help organizations unlock the value of their data through modern platforms, reporting tools, and scalable data pipelines built on cloud infrastructure.
- Responsible AI deployment to guide agencies adopting generative AI tools with proper governance, bias testing, and full alignment with EOTSS guidelines on AI development and use.
We handle the technical and compliance complexity so your team can stay focused on delivering public services.
Get Started
If your organization is ready to move away from legacy infrastructure, lower operational costs, and improve system reliability through ITS-88, contact our cloud infrastructure team to discuss your requirements and next steps.
