Enterprise information technology (IT) and the supporting components can eat up a significant chunk of a company’s budget, with much of it allocated to the infrastructure and personnel needed to sustain it. In this respect, the Department of Defense (DOD) is no different than many large corporations, and IT is a significant investment across the entire Department of Navy (DON). In recent years, as budgets rose, the Navy and the rest of government experienced a substantial growth in IT networks, systems, and applications. In order to attack these rising costs, the President signed a directive that started the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) in February 2010, with the intent of addressing harsh fiscal realities while positioning government IT for the future.
Specifically, the FDCCI requires agencies to reduce their data center footprint by minimizing overhead costs, increasing the security and stability of data centers, and improving the overall efficiency of the federal IT infrastructure. As part of the President’s “Campaign to Cut Waste,” the federal government plans to shut down more than 800 data centers by 2015, a move that is expected to save taxpayers more than $3 billion dollars.