US Government Begins Largest IT Consolidation in History 283
miller60 writes "Saying 1,100 data centers is too many, the federal government has begun what looms as the largest IT consolidation in history. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has directed federal agencies to inventory their assets by April 30 and prepare a plan to reduce the number of servers and data centers, with a focus on slashing energy costs (full memo). Kundra says some applications may be shifted to cloud computing platforms customized for government use."
Dear Contractors... (Score:5, Funny)
Bout time (Score:4, Funny)
See, the last time we upgraded we put everything on eleven hundred windows 95 machines with 1 gig hard drives. That did pretty good for a spell, all things considered. Now we're thinking about one of them pointy computers... whaddya call em? Blade servers? Yeah, we hear good things about those.
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:4, Funny)
Clud Crumpooting
Consolidate (Score:5, Funny)
Every business I've ever worked for has had that one dusty 8086 off in a corner. It would run a single batch file every few hours. No one would touch it, because no one knew what it did-- just that whatever it did do was mission critical.
Thus, the US government should just consolidate everything down to a single batch program run by a 8086. I'm sure there's a spare closet in the White House or something they can use as a server room.
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:1, Funny)
You, my friend, misunderestimate.
Re:Dear Contractors... (Score:5, Funny)
TEOTWAWKI.bat ... every 108 minutes (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Dear Contractors... (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, as long as they bring in the free market to do it. Nothing gets a job done on time and under cost like unfettered free enterprise and rugged individualism.
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:4, Funny)
It depends entirely on the political clout of your congressional representation.
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps you should pay some attention to your Spam folder... I believe there are messages in there from people willing to sell you vallium, which you clearly need.
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about "use it or lose it"? (Score:2, Funny)
As the funding for the year would approach a close (in October), all-of-a-sudden the leadership would start spending money like crazy because they had a large surplus. Money would be spent on things that were not actually necessary; if they were necessary, why not get them at any other time during the year?
But, I seriously needed the 12 pairs of sunglasses that I got in October 2006. They were only $200.00 / each and we only bought 12 for 12 different people. When I say we needed them I mean we needed to spend more money! I actually wore a pair this morning.
Re:Free software and owned infrastructure (Score:3, Funny)
But hey, that's the holocost of doing business! ;)
Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing" (Score:4, Funny)
Nor to know how to pronounce corpsman [youtube.com] (hint:not corpse-man)
Re:TEOTWAWKI.bat ... every 108 minutes (Score:2, Funny)
Damn them to hell. (Score:2, Funny)
We've been consolidating for the last few years in the Air Force. Needless to say the whole experience has been on par with getting punched in the face everyday. The concept of cloud computing works great until you realize that you have to pay for all that bandwidth when people actually want to use there computers for something other than email and a few web based portals.
Their solution has been to disable just about every usefull function since data transfer is no longer hopping a free ride across the base network. That combined with the fact that when the network at our primary factility goes down so does everyone else's since those oh so lovely portals that link us to everything else are only served up there.
The concept of cloud computing looks great on paper and actually does work for really light applications such as email, but who ever thought that converting everything including locally shared data over to the cloud (cloud served but still restricted to local access??!!) should be forced to lick the toilets in every office, just after lunch time while they are still warmed, in every office they've inflicted this crap upon.