Inside the FDCCI: Cost Management

Inside the FDCCI: Cost Management

The 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management, spearheaded by Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel, has been underway for nearly three years.  The goal of this initiative is to increase operational efficiency. Reducing the number of federal data centers and shifting to a “Cloud-first” policy are among the major milestones.

The monumental task requires coordination of complex IT environments housing massive amounts of data. Agency CIOs lack upfront funding, face aggressive timelines to produce results, and must meet compliance requirements…all while mitigating security risks and maintaining service levels.

The overarching theme associated with capacity planning is the dynamic tension of balancing resources between three critical aspects of data center operation: Cost Management, Service Delivery, and Risk Management. Over the next three days, we will explore each of these aspects.

Cost Management

IT capital and operating costs in the data center are driven by requirements for storage, bandwidth and the need to maintain multiple point solutions. Data reduction through compression will reduce overall storage and bandwidth requirements necessary for data transmissions. In practice, compression has shown up to a 95% reduction in data size, decreasing overall data related costs.

Costs are contained by embracing a compression strategy that alleviates needs for increased bandwidth during transmission as well as the burden and expense associated with additional storage uptake. What’s more, compression for efficient file transfer and storage reduction translates immediately to benefits and value for the cloud.