States Move Toward the Center on I.T.

[Sunite]

States Move Toward the Center on I.T.
By Patrick Thibodeau
September 20, 2007 4:07PM

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Of 29 states surveyed by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, nearly 80 percent had proposed a data center consolidation project, were developing plans for one or had a project in progress, according to a study conducted by the NASCIO's Infrastructure and Services Committee.

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   West Virginia is part of a wave of states that are embracing data center and server consolidation Relevant Products/Services in their government I.T. operations. It's replacing 85 e-mail servers that run a half-dozen different applications with four Exchange-based systems -- two for production, and two for backup.

And that's just for starters. Kyle Schäfer, West Virginia's chief technology officer, wants to extend the consolidation initiative to the state's financial, procurement and human resources management systems. The savings on hardware alone justify the move, according to Schäfer, who said that West Virginia currently replaces as many as 20 e-mail servers annually as part of its regular hardware refresh cycle.

Schafer knows that consolidation is old hat to many of his corporate IT counterparts. "Most Fortune 500 organizations run with less than a half-dozen e-mail servers," he said.

And he speaks from experience: Before becoming West Virginia's CTO two years ago, he was director of technology and design at electric and gas utility NiSource Inc.'s corporate services subsidiary in Columbus, Ohio.

Having spent years in the private sector, Schafer found state government IT to be entirely different. Individual agencies often have autonomous IT departments, and centralized management of technology remains a work in progress for most states. Schafer said that in West Virginia, he found servers "housed all over the place" -- even in switch rooms and wiring closets. In addition, there were no central data backup or security Relevant Products/Services controls.

"It was somewhat of a shock to me to come into state government and see the level of autonomy that state agencies had over the technical infrastructure Relevant Products/Services," Schafer said. But now, states "are moving in the same direction that private industry has already taken," he added. "We're just a couple of years behind that curve."

Of 29 state governments surveyed last spring by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, nearly 80% had proposed a data center consolidation project, were developing plans for one or had a project in progress, according to a report released last month. The study was conducted by the NASCIO's Infrastructure and Services Committee, which Schafer co-chairs.

The report said that Michigan has closed 21 data centers over the past two years in a consolidation effort. That has saved the state $9.5 million thus far, according to the report, and Michigan officials expect the savings to amount to as much as $20 million over five years. The state has also avoided $7.3 million in capital costs that it would have incurred to upgrade its data centers and computer rooms. And it has regained more than 29,000 square feet of floor space. (continued...)

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