Overview[]
Launched on February 26, 2010, the U.S. Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative aims to address the challenges facing the federal government due to the growth in redundant infrastructure investments in federal data centers, including the cost, inefficiency, unsustainablity and enormous energy consumption.
Information collected from agencies in 2009 shows relatively low utilization rates of current infrastructure and limited reuse of data centers within or across agencies. The cost of operating a single data center is significant, from hardware and software costs to real estate and cooling costs.
The FDCCI is aimed at assisting agencies in identifying their existing data center assets and formulating detailed consolidation plans that include a technical roadmap and clear consolidation targets. The FDCCI will cut down the number of data centers across the government and assist agencies in applying best practices from the public and private sector, with goals to:
- 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, and
- Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies.
Through the FDCCI, a minimum of 800 (of the current 2100) data centers will be closed by 2015.
Sources[]
- Federal CIO, Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (Feb. 26, 2010) (full-text).
- GAO, Data Center Consolidation: Agencies Need to Complete Inventories and Plans to Achieve Expected Savings (GAO-11-565) (July 2011) (full-text).
- 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, at 5.