State Technology Offices Follow the Fed’s Example
Chris Cruz, Deputy Director & Deputy State CIO of the State of California presented the goal of consolidation of the State’s thirty-four data centers down to three or four. Mr. Cruz noted this as an opportunity to address inefficiencies in the IT structure of the various State agencies and provide standardization. The State of California is following a trend of consolidation being implemented at various State and Federal levels.
The Federal Government established the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) in 2010 and the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) in 2014 to shut down a large number of facilities owned by various Government Agencies. This was a response to the large operational expenditures realized in operating and maintaining thousands of outdated, inefficient facilities. In March of 2016 the U.S. Federal CIO announced a new Data Center Optimization Initiative which requires data center optimization plans from all agencies, as well as a drive to increase energy efficiency.
The data center Architecture/Engineering/Construction (A/E/C) industry took this news with the concern that the Federal Government would not build any new data centers from now on and there was some sense of panic in lost opportunities. My interpretation of the initiative was that there were new opportunities for those of us in the A/E/C field to help evaluate the large number of existing data centers and potentially provide upgrades to power and cooling systems for those which were to remain operational.
According to Data Center Dynamics (www.datacenterdynamics.com) in March of 2017 these two programs were projected to save the Government over $1 billion in operating expenses. (http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/colo-cloud/under-trump-us-federal-data-center-consolidation-progress-remains-unclear/98046.article). The article notes that many of the Federal agencies have not been able to consolidate as quickly as initially projected. One exception noted is the Social Security Agency which opened a new centralized data center in Urbana, MD. This project was funded by the funds made available in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I was personally on a team vying for the opportunity to design and construct this facility, ultimately not winning the project. It is an example, though, of how centralization can yield operational savings and increase energy efficiency with upfront capital expenditures. The approach the U.S. Government implemented has the agencies at the State level taking notice and putting their own plans in place.
Julient Van Wagenen, Senior Web Editor for StateTech magazine reported that New Jersey is the latest State to centralize IT functions (https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2017/06/new-jersey-moves-centralize-executive-it-branch). Minnesota, Arizona, North Carolina are just a few of a long list of States which recognize the financial and cyber security benefits of consolidation, but some are wary of making an initial investment in additional infrastructure to yield savings that may not be realized for a few years afterwards.
My own personal experience in realizing a State level consolidation was in 2011 while working with the University of Utah (the “U” for short). The U had approximately seventeen different data centers on campus serving various colleges and departments, including the University of Utah Hospital. Each data center was outdated, at full capacity or limited on space, power, and cooling for growth, with high operational costs. All University design and construction projects must obtain funding through the State of Utah DCFM (Department Construction and Facility Management). Upon funding the plan to renovate an existing building owned by the U into a new centralized enterprise data center was implemented. This gave the U the opportunity to centralize IT functions, as well as implement the best practices of redundancy and reliability in the power and cooling infrastructure. I led the engineering team designing the power and cooling infrastructure with the challenge of maintaining high levels of reliability while achieving top tier energy efficiency, all within a budget that many considered not enough. Ultimately the project was a success with the U closing down many of those outdated data centers. Generac Generators provided a video case study of the data center power systems and giving an overall view of the facility itself, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrsAo-xh5zI.
So the States are taking notice. They see the rewards in financial and energy savings as well as increased cyber security and protection of data. New positions are being created at the State level and forming partnerships with world class technology companies to be successful.
