Congress Debates DHS Data Center Budget

It looks like funding for a critical data center consolidation for the Department of Homeland Security has become a political football in the wake of a critical report from  DHS’ own inspector general. Here’s what’s happening:   

• In April the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report (PDF) that the department had made progress in establishing a disaster recovery program, citing an ongoing plan to close 16 legacy data centers and consolidate their workloads in two new data centers in Mississippi and Virginia. But more work is needed, the OIG said. “DHS has not established the necessary connectivity to ensure that DC1 and DC2 can provide backup capabilities for each other,” said the report, which also faulted risk assessments at both sites, including the placement of diesel fuel storage tanks “within several feet of the building” at the Virginia site.
• On June 12 the House Appropriations Committee agreed to give DHS just $20 million in fiscal 2010 for the data center consolidation, considerably less than the $200 million that the Obama administration had requested for the program. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), chairman of the committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee, released a report saying the committee was “disturbed” by the inspector general’s findings that included “a number of alarming problems and vulnerabilities at these two data centers.”
• On June 17 a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would provide “significant funding” for the DHS consolidation program. The specific amount of funding will be made public later this week when the full committee considers the bill.

It looks like there’s more to come on this story, as lawmakers seek to hold DHS officials accountable for ensuring that the consolidation project creates a reliable disaster recovery system for the department’s IT operations. Still, it’s hard to fix an expensive problem without funding.

Michael Dell: We’re Ready to Go Shopping

Dell Inc. (DELL) is ready to make acquisitions to equip itself for the Battle for the Data Center. CEO Michael Dell said today in Beijing that the company is eyeing acquisitions in key markets for data center equipment and services. “We are focused on data centers, services, software, servers and storage, Dell said. “Those are likely areas for Dell to use its capital for non-organic growth. If you look in the last few years at the acquisitions we have made, it really has been focused in those areas.”

On Wednesday Dell unveiled 14 new products for the data center, including new hardware and services. See coverage at Silicon Valley Watcher, GigaOM, Cnet, ZDNet and Network World. 

What kind of acquisitions make the most sense for Dell? What do you think?

EDS to Support FDA Data Center Consolidation

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has won a key contract to support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as it consolidates its data center network into two facilities. The FDA recently selected 10 contractors to support the project, which will invest $2.5 billion in updating the agency’s IT services and data center infrastructure over the next 10 years.

EDS was awarded a contract to oversee migrate the FDA’s existing applications to a “contractor-owned” data center, with an initial funding of $12 million. The agency’s infrastructure will be consolidated in two locations: the EDS facility and a second data center at the agency’s White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.

EDS was recently acquired by HP for $13.9 billion.

Roundup: New Data Center Projects

There have been a number of new data center unveilings this week. Here’s a roundup:

• Perimeter Technology Center opened for business today at its new 23,000 square foot data center in Oklahoma City. This is  the third new facility for the company, but the first ground-up greenfield build.
• Dartmouth College has opened a new data center in Lebanon, New Hampshire for the school’s Computer Services Department. The new facility adds 80 terabutes of storage and is designed to prevent a power outage like the one that hit the Dartmouth data center in 2004.
• Telehouse Europe has announced its third data center in France, a 15,000 square meter facility in Saint-Quentin-en Yveline.

DHS Data Center Consolidation Goes to CSC

A $390 million contract to consolidate data centers for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been awarded to Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). The DHS is in the process of consolidating 18 data centers into two next-generation facilities. CSC will take over management of the first DHS facility, based at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, from Science Applications International Corp. See NextGov for details.

HP Consolidation Update: 28 Sites Retired

InformationWeek has an update on the data center consolidation by HP (HP), in which the company is consolidating 85 data centers worldwide into six larger centers located in three U.S. cities. CIO Randy Mott shares a status report:

The six data centers - two in Austin, two in Houston, and two in Atlanta - are operational. So far, 28 of the old data centers have been shut off and 700 applications moved into the new ones. … The number of applications now stands at 3,300, and active IT projects are actually down to less than 500. Mott says he’ll get close to the 8,000 mark for IT workers, but just as important is that the ratio of HP IT employees to contract workers will shift from approximately 50-50 in 2005 to about 90-10.

HP’s plan called for it to build two 200,000 square foot data centers in each of three markets. In Atlanta, the facilites are located in Suwanee and Alpharetta.

Server Refreshes On Tap for 2008

Computerworld’s most recent Vital Signs survey found that 32 percent of respondents said that server spending represents the single biggest increase in their IT budgets for 2008. Server consolidations, virtualization projects and the rollout of Windows Server 2008 are among the factors driving spending on new servers. Cyclical spending issues are also a factor, according to Computerworld.

“After the dot-com crash, many organizations began keeping equipment for four, five or even seven years rather than the usual three,” the article notes. “Many of those systems are now being retired.” GM, MasterCard and Bank of New York/Mellon are among the organizations that talk about their server spending plans for next year.

More on Intel’s Data Center Consolidation

Intel (INTC) is lifting the lid on some of the details of the data center consolidation it announced in April in Beijing. Intel is a year into the process, which will eventually consolidate 133 data centers worldwide into just eight high-density facilities of about 300,000 square feet apiece. About 60 percent of Intel’s existing facilities are at least 10 years old.

“We’ve started the process to End of Life (EOL) or consolidate our data centers down to just eight strategic locations,” Brently Davis, manager of Intel’s data center efficiency initiative, writes in a blog post. “This effort is planned to take us eight years, but we’re working to pull this in sooner. This initiative enables us to reduce costs, improve server and storage utilization, create higher density & more energy efficient data centers, and allows us to keep pace with our company’s rapid rate of innovation. The effort could deliver up to $750 million in Net Present Value.” Those savings will grow to between $1.4 billion and $1.8 billion over the seven-year period needed to complete the consolidation.

Intel currently has about 93,000 servers in its data centers, many of which will be replaced with a smaller footprint of new multi-core Intel Xeon processors. Virtualization will allow Intel to create higher density data centers.