CEOs to feds: Consolidate data centers to cut IT spending
Both men attempted to play down concerns about information loss or security breaches that cloud critics say are inevitable when outsourcing data.
The heads of IBM Corp. and Dell Inc. this week told President Obama and other White House officials that consolidating data centers is one of the easiest ways to trim federal information technology spending.
"All we're talking about is putting things together and sharing them," IBM Chief Executive Officer Samuel J. Palmisano said Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies during a talk on how to reduce the deficit and promote innovation. "It's months of work; it's not years of work. . . . It's just planning and literally putting things together."
In their capacity as members of the Technology CEO Council, an advocacy organization, Palmisano and Dell CEO Michael Dell met with the president Tuesday to discuss boosting technological competitiveness and streamlining government operations.
Slicing the government's server farm footprint is one of 25 steps the administration announced in December 2010 that it will take to overhaul IT contracting. The goal is to shut 800 of the government's more than 2,000 centers by 2015, thereby cutting operating budgets and energy costs. The pair recommended agencies use virtualization, a means of segmenting one physical server into smaller servers that can be accessed remotely, as well as cloud computing to do this.
Cloud computing, essentially a form of virtualization, involves using online servers, storage, applications and other IT tools owned by a third-party. Both techniques reduce the need for multiple physical machines by pooling computing power.
"Fundamentally, it's sharing of resources," Palmisano said, adding the government should aim for even fewer centers, perhaps 200.
Both men attempted to play down concerns about information loss or security breaches that cloud critics say are inevitable when outsourcing data.
For the Defense Department, those fears are real issues, but most civilian work, including payroll, e-mail and other back-office tasks, the CEOs said, lends itself naturally to the cloud.
"We're talking about secure, private clouds," Dell said.