U.S. Data Center Consolidation by Government: DISA Closes Data Centers

As part of an overarching data center consolidation plan, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has closed eight U.S. data centers. The overall goal of the approach is cost savings: The plans were designed to save as much as $17 million in operating and other costs each year.

The consolidation plan, which has been in place since 2008, includes the closing of eight defense enterprise computing centers. In addition to cost savings, the consolidation effort will also provide improvements to operational efficiencies.

One of the most recent closures under the consolidation plan was the shutdown of their Huntsville, Alabama data center, which closed in early July. According to the Defense Department, that closure alone will save the organization $3.4 million a year.

Since beginning the consolidation effort, DISA has eliminated eight data centers, bringing their facility total from 18 to 10. Branches of the armed services are also working to consolidate the number of data centers they utilize and manage, and have begun migrating the organization’s enterprise applications to a single, core data center. This approach will eliminate some of the operational clutter caused by older, underused applications and instead leverage standard systems.

Overall, DISA will represent the Department of Defense’s core data center provider, and has already begun reworking data center systems and components to allow for secure access to protected, mission-critical materials for DOD employees. At the same time, DISA will focus on the highest level of uptime possible.

DISA is working in tandem with the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, the group established to oversee and curb the growth of data centers historically seen in the government sector.

“By shutting down and consolidating under-performing data centers and optimizing the data centers in our federal inventory, we stand to save taxpayers billions of dollars and curb spending on underutilized infrastructure,” the FDCCI stated.