Topic
IT modernization within the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP)
Summary & Highlights
- Tom Santucci, the director of IT modernization within the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP), said the data center optimization opportunity now is more about application rationalization and less about straight data centers.“It’s really nice to go to the IT Dashboard and see the accomplishments of the federal workforce of closing data centers. Given the interconnection between cloud and data centers, we see a migration toward that,” Santucci said on Ask the CIO. “We’re going to continue to focus on IT modernization and not physical structures, and spotlighting administration’s priorities around cyber, climate, zero trust, IPv6 and other things that make it all work.”
- The Government Accountability Office said in January that since 2010, agencies have closed more than 6,800 data centers and saved or avoided spending more than $6.6 billion. But there still is plenty of work remaining. Not only were there more than 1,500 open data centers, Carol Harris, the director of IT and Cybersecurity Issues at GAO, said there is another 4,500 data centers that have fallen from agency inventories that represent both huge closure and optimization opportunities.
- As most agencies continue to run on-premise data centers for the foreseeable future along with utilizing commercial cloud services, experts say the goal is to find the right balance of where their applications are most effective for the right cost.
- Tony Scott, the former federal CIO and now CEO of Intrusion, a cybersecurity company, said application modernization will drive many of the consolidation vs. data center modernization decisions.
- The Federal IT Dashboard says agencies have a long way to go to make on-premise data centers for efficient. Out of 1,400 data centers, only 33% have energy metering technologies, about 1 % of all servers are considered underutilized and 33% are virtualizing servers. GAO found in March 2022 that agencies are doing a good job meeting their data center optimization goals.
Miller, Jason. “New Data Center Journey Must Include Optimization, Modernization, Hybrid Cloud | Federal News Network.” Federal News Network, federalnewsnetwork.com, 5 Aug. 2022, federalnewsnetwork.com/ask-the-cio/2022/08/new-data-center-journey-must-include-optimization-modernization-hybrid-cloud/?utm_campaign=oktopost-2022-08-Native+Posts&utm_content=Link&utm_medium=organic-oktopost&utm_source=linkedin.