In February 2010, the U.S. federal government unveiled the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, an initiative aimed at addressing unfettered growth in the number of government data centers. The initiative, outlined by the government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is an effort to assist government agencies identify existing data center assets and formulate consolidation plans that include a technical roadmap and specific targets.
Through the initiative, the government will assist its agencies leverage best practices from the public and private sectors. The government expects the consolidation efforts to promote green IT, reduce data center costs, increase efficiencies, and raise the overall IT security posture of the government. The OMB plans to release data center reduction targets by agency as part of the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget.
As the federal government prepares to implement this consolidation, agencies are taking a close look at their data center planning, processes, and operations. While public sector data centers have their own set of unique challenges, they can learn an important lesson from private sector data centers. That lesson: How to ensure potential efficiencies and savings are realized without compromising or disrupting data center availability and performance.
Although the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative is a step in the right direction to stop infrastructure sprawl, the public sector faces a number of challenges preventing the initiative from being the game-changing program it is intended to be. In many instances, these challenges will need to be addressed or discussed before consolidations can take place.