As part of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, federal agencies have been working hard to close data centers and move to a virtualized environment. According to FedScoop, in the past 90 days, agencies have closed 50 data centers. That is definitely a step in the right direction- bringing the government’s total to 318 since the launch of the initiative.
In talks with Civilian and Defense agencies, we have seen great pressure that is coming down on enterprise IT staff to close these data centers. The definition of data center is any room that is devoted to data processing servers, i.e., including server closets (typically < 200 sq. ft.) and server rooms (typically < 500 sq.ft.) within a conventional building is considered a Data Center, just like larger floor spaces or entire buildings dedicated to housing servers, storage devices, and network equipment.
Federal agencies plan to close 56 more data centers by the end of September 2012 according to data.gov. The government plans to close 962 data centers by the end of 2015 after starting with more than 3,100.
Closures of these data centers will:
- Promote the use of Green IT by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers
- Reduce the cost of data center hardware, software and operations
- Increase the overall IT security posture of the government
- Increase the use of more efficient computing platforms and technologies
