For the U.S. military, base closings and consolidations have been the norm for more than three decades. Now, federal data centers are undergoing a similar draw-down. With its $80 billion-a-year IT budget, the U.S. government has been engaged in an ongoing effort to consolidate its far-flung network of data centers spanning its various agencies. Plans have been announced to close up to 800 of the government's 2,000 data centers. Up to 195 data centers are reportedly set to close this year, and another 178 data centers will be closed by the end of 2012. The strategies being employed to manage this consolidation include cloud computing, virtualization, service oriented architecture, and hardware retirement. The cost savings simply from running fewer data centers is estimated at more than $3 billion a year in real estate and energy savings. Recently, the White House released a map and list showing where it is closing down data centers.
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