Data Center

Data Center Optimization Best Practices

Federal agencies need to ensure their cloud services are interoperable as they move to make their data centers more efficient.

Wylie Wong

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Wylie Wong is a freelance journalist who specializes in business, technology and sports. He is a regular contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines.

As agencies pursue data center optimization by adopting private and public cloud services, they have to make sure they don’t end up with stovepiped services that cannot easily share data, says Social Security Administration CIO Rob Klopp.

Agencies can ensure that these services can interoperate by standardizing on a cloud platform up front, he says.

“At the SSA, we will deploy using a cloud platform — maybe Cloud Foundry, maybe OpenShift, maybe something else — to allow applications to move and stretch across these services with elasticity,” Klopp says.

Bob Brown, the data center lead at the Department of Defense, sees three areas where agencies can find savings.

60 percent of savings can come from reducing a data center’s workload, such as eliminating redundant applications.
30 percent of savings comes from migrating to more efficient platforms, such as in-house virtualized infrastructure or external cloud services.
10 percent of cost reductions can come from facilities savings, such as more efficient cooling systems.

For more on how data centers are becoming more efficient, visit, "Federal Data Centers Are Getting Greener."