Smartsheet Gov, as described by VP of Product Marketing Amy Frampton, is functionally similar to regular Smartsheet, which lets employees plan, capture, manage, automate and report on work. This includes scheduling, communication and updating their progress on a dashboard, so everyone involved with a project sees who’s doing what and how it’s going.
Frampton said the difference between the two products comes down to Gov meeting the standards of FedRAMP, an industry requirement for any software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider working with the federal government, and often relied upon by state and local governments, too. She said another difference is that Gov was specifically built for the Amazon Web Services cloud, whereas regular Smartsheet runs across several clouds, including the company’s own data centers.
Achieving a FedRAMP Authorization to Operate (ATO) can take years and millions of dollars, but Frampton said Smartsheet is on the cusp of doing it in less than a year, having passed the review process, been admitted to the marketplace and labeled “ready,” with an official ATO expected in the next few weeks.
Smartsheet announced the new product this week at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C.
“We got a lot of requests from our government customers that if we would get FedRAMP certified, they could use us at a greater degree, across agencies and on much bigger projects,” she said. “We have a team that works directly with state and local governments here at Smartsheet and have been for years, and they’re getting feedback from their state and local customers that they are just as excited about this as our federal customers are.”
The company’s news release said its original Smartsheet product has been in the hands of 80,000 customers in 190 countries, and 28 federal agencies participated in the beta test for Smartsheet Gov prior to its launch on Monday.
According to Frampton, Smartsheet will be the first company focused on work management to get FedRAMP certified. Although Smartsheet Gov lacks some connections to third-party products that its non-FedRAMP cousin supports, she said, future updates will address this.
