Hewlett-Packard is one of the many vendors that are benefiting from the U.S government’s plans to modernize its IT infrastructure, a very wide-scale initiative that was kicked off by the current administration with the appointment of the nation’s first CTO.

HP’s server group has been assigned with the task of powering up cloud computing services for the Army, as a part of a one year contract that may be extended for up to an additional four years. The maximum budget is $249 million, the company said.

Some background from Bloomberg:

“Hewlett-Packard, the world’s No. 1 maker of personal computers, is trying to invest in growing areas. It said last month that it would combine its printer and PC divisions to streamline the business and save money for that growth.

Shares of the Palo Alto, Calif. company shed 35 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $23.53 in afternoon trading.”

The public sector is investing in a number of different IT initiatives, all of which are designed to boost the way different agencies operate and manage themselves.  And HP is not the only one that’s banking on this: IBM has landed an agreement of a similar nature fairly recently.

Big Blue has been contracted by the Air Force to provide the latter with the means to better administrate its real-estate – over 10 million acres of buildings, land and a few thousand structures.  IBM’s software is being implemented to collect and analyze data from all of these facilities, which can then be converted to metrics and analysis on where cost savings and improvements may be achieved.

Big data is indeed a big area of interest for the government. One recently announced program will even invest $200 million throughout its life-cycle to realize the goal of smarter agencies drawing conclusions from their data.