Two years ago, the Office of Management and Budget launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), which aims to close 40 percent of the federal government's 3,133 data centers by the end of 2015. Central to accomplishing this goal is not only closing data centers, but also making the remaining facilities more efficient.

"We need to ensure we are delivering better service to the American people for less," Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel wrote in a blog post explaining the initiative's goals. "Accordingly, agencies will focus on computing power and density instead of capacity, taking advantage of current technologies that deliver more bang for the buck."

A recent InformationWeek article profiled the progress being made under the FDCCI, explaining that one of the challenges for agencies is that they must realize data center efficiency without added expenditures. To do so, the article noted, data centers must make more of their remaining space. OMB hopes to raise server utilization for federal data centers to between 60 and 70 percent, up from a pre-FDCCI range of 7 to 15 percent.

The FDCCI consists of six phases, according to InformationWeek. First, agencies are expected to perform an inventory of IT hardware, software and energy use metrics. Then they must map out their application usage, make strategic decisions for how to increase server utilization and design an architecture to migrate applications and servers to target states. Finally, they must consolidate and continue to monitor server use for optimization.

The approaches to following these steps have varied among departments, but, in some cases, the path has been through improving the use of existing storage hardware. InformationWeek noted that the Army, in particular, is looking for ways to maximize the investments it has already made.

Improving storage efficiency through compression
One path organizations can follow to improve storage efficiency and take steps toward data center optimization is through the use of data compression software. TechTarget noted that, by optimizing data as close to the point of creation as possible, organizations benefit from having less to move, manage, back up, copy, store and replicate.

"Data compression has been around for a long time, but this is one technology that is currently enjoying a renaissance period," analyst Steve Duplessie wrote. "Primary data compression is going to change the fundamental efficiency and overall value proposition that users derive."

As organizations look to replicate the goals of the FDCCI, file compression software should be one of the tools used to maximize server efficiency.