The Obama administration has challenged federal agencies to improve efficiency in their data centers, but in many ways, the deck seems stacked against them.
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra started the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative in February. FDCCI seeks to reduce energy use, spur IT cost decreases and improve security.
However, agencies face a number of obstacles to consolidation: a lack of upfront funding, technical obstacles, unrealistic timelines, and cultural and political problems. As a result, data center consolidation could take a decade to achieve, according to an Input report titled “Assessment of the 2010 Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.”
Two-thirds of the data center managers and CIO office executives at federal agencies interviewed by Input said “the biggest obstacle was lack of upfront funding,” said Angie Petty, a principal analyst at Input’s Federal Industry Analysis program and a co-author of the report.
“Unfunded mandates have been cited as the downfall of the 1995 federal data center consolidation initiative, and this time around, the White House has again chosen not to set aside additional funding for data center consolidation efforts,” the report states.
The lack of funding limits the actions that agency IT managers can take. So agencies are using technology refresh cycles to get around that obstacle, Petty said.
However, consolidation is not the only way to achieve data center efficiency, said Chris Kemp, NASA’s chief technology officer for IT, a new position created in May.
Source:http://gcn.com/articles/2010/10/04/data-center-management.aspx
