Government Launches Data Center Consolidation Effort

With the number of government data centers growing from 432 in 1999 to 1,100 plus, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has announced a Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, according to Data Center Knowledge. A memo from Kundra says consolidation plans will need to be finalized by Dec. 31, 2010, with implementation beginning in 2011.

 

Says Kundra:

This growth in redundant infrastructure investments is costly, inefficient and unsustainable and has a significant impact on energy consumption. In 2006 Federal servers and data centers consumed 6 billion kwH of electricity, and without a fundamental shift in how we deploy technology it could reach 12 billion kwH by 2012.

The initiative has four high-level goals, including lowering the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers and reducing the cost of data center hardware, software and operations, reports Web Host Industry Review.