The Government Accountability Office has charged 24 Federal agencies with consolidating data centers, but it seems their progress is too slow, according to a new report.
These Federal agencies agreed to participate in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, which was designed to reduce the energy and spatial consumption, hardware and software cost, and security liability.
The report is titled “Data Center Consolidation: Agencies Making Progress, but Planned Savings Goals Need to Be Established,” in which GAO recommends that most of the participating agencies need to pick up their data center consolidation efforts to make a bigger impact on savings and avoidance.
The good news: Last November, participating agencies reported closing 3,125 of 10,584 data centers through fiscal 2015. From 2011 to 2015, all 24 agencies are responsible for $2.8 billion in savings and avoidances.
The bad news: 22 of the 24 agencies reported “limited progress” through fiscal 2015. Also, the departments of Agriculture, Defense, the Interior, and the Treasury seemed to pull a disproportionate amount of the load for the other agencies, closing 84 percent of those data centers and accounting for $2.4 billion in savings and avoidances.
For 2011 to 2019, the GAO projects total savings and avoidances to hit $8.2 billion. The agencies plan to close an additional 2,078 data centers, for cost savings and avoidances of $5.4 billion by the end of fiscal year 2019, to meet that goal.
