US Government Begins Largest IT Consolidation in History

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."

Comments

... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[Zarf]

I predict a rash of job openings that you can get hired for provided you can spell "Cloud Computing"

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[Anonymous Coward]

Clud Crumpooting

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[dkleinsc]

It depends entirely on the political clout of your congressional representation.

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[cromar]

You are wrong my friend, very wrong. For example, Missourians have plenty of different pronunciations when compared to the North East, the South, California, the other Midwestern states, etc. Here in Missouri, many people say "nookyuler" 9or whoever you want to phoneticize it). We also have pronunciations such as "Da-ad" for "dad," "Missour-uh," and we drop are G's as often as the East and West Coasters use the term "fly-over states." (Another example of elitist BS.) There ain't nothin' wrong with th' way we speak.

I'm not trying to say GW was an intelligent person. (Are any politicians very bright? You'd have to do a lot to convince me.) I'm saying he wasn't an idiot because of his accent. I hate elitist crap like that. And frankly, it is sad you can't see the inherent prejudice and ignorance in statements such as the one we are discussing. It upsets me, but I get some satisfaction when I see arrogant people get intellectually sucker-punched when they underestimate "us poor country folk" and end up showing who is the real idiot. I'm not directing that at you, I'm sure it's just an honest mistake on your part, but again, you have an ill-conceived notion that has no basis in reality.

http://web.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/missouri/missouri.htm

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[Anonymous Coward]

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"

[Captain Splendid]

That right there is good strategery.

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[Runaway1956]

40, 50, or 60 years ago, there were indeed pronounced accents in the United States. Sometimes, crossing a state line meant everyone sounded quite different. Today? Come on - damned near no one speaks with a pronounced accent. Just a bit of a drawl here, some slurring there - nothing that accounts for nuke-you-lar physics.

I always liked this song - especially the line, "Learned to talk like the man on the six o'clock news" at about 2:40

When I was in junior high school, a teacher from out of state told us, "No matter how far from home you go, people will know that you're from Western Pennsylvania as soon as you open your mouth, and they'll dismiss you as an ignorant hillbilly." Like the song says, I learned to talk like the guy on the news, and I simply don't use those three terms the teacher was telling us about.

Bottom line? Ignorant is as ignorant does.

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[Pojut]

MISSION: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

We are 100% grassroots. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented. We demand a government that responds to the needs of the majority of its citizens as expressed by our votes and by our voices; NOT corporate interests as expressed by misleading advertisements and campaign contributions.

http://coffeepartyusa.com/

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[cayenne8]

"Why? It doesn't seem to have been a job qualification to be able to spell or pronounce "nookuler"

Nor to know how to pronounce corpsman (hint:not corpse-man)

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[billcopc]

Pride in your origins ? You were born. Whoop-tee-doo! One person's birth doesn't make an arbitrary geopolitical territory automagically awesomer than the one next to it.

If we're going to take the gloves off, I'll posit that the entirety of "American English" is ignorant, as it is an inferior, jocular, slurred dialect that only loosely resembles English syntax. It is to English what Afrikaans is to Dutch.

Re:... if you can spell "Cloud Computing"

[AndersOSU]

Once upon a time, there was an expectation that the person holding the highest office in the land would conduct themselves in a concise, careful, and wise manner

When? I'm interested if you can rectify your statement with the Andrew Jackson presidency. (also the antebellum presidents were, without exception, hacks, most of the reconstruction presidents were corrupt, then you've got the racist Woodrow Wilson, the oblivious Herbert Hoover, and more recently tricky Dick and our good friend W.)

We've been lucky, as a country to get good presidents when we need them (Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and JFK) but trite populism has always played well in politics - though Sarah Palin may yet prove to be a new low.

Dear Contractors...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Dinner is served! Please approach the money trough in an orderly line...

Re:Dear Contractors...

[hedwards]

I know you're joking, but it could go either way. Trying to manage, secure, track and backup the huge number of servers that the various agencies and departments use costs a pretty considerable amount of money to do right. Of course they haven't been doing it right up until now. Consolidating into a smaller number of server farms that are somewhat spread through the US has definite potential in terms of dealing with those factors more efficiently. That being said, we won't know until it happens, there's still plenty of ways for pork and waste to creep into the equation.

Re:Dear Contractors...

[wealthychef]

I for one have full confidence in the government that after reorganizing their data centers, they will have a lean, optimized, efficient operation. Who's with me?

Re:Dear Contractors...

[BitHive]

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:Dear Contractors...

[ArcadeX]

I work on the DoT network, and this thought scares me. Please remember the lowest bidder gets the job in most cases, we recently started putting VM servers in, and these guys can't even reboota a virtual server without screwing it up. As a regional subcontractor, I'm completely locked out, to the point that I had to spend 10 minutes on the phone with our official helpdesk explaining the runas command in windows to the guy on the other end so he could run a command I don't have access to...

Re:Dear Contractors...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are, absolutely undeniably, substantial economies of scale in IT at virtually every step of the game. Hardware gets cheaper as it is produced in greater volume, software costs serious cash to write but nothing to copy, small shops might have a 1/25 admin/server ratio because the minimum number of admins is 1(.5 admins just lie on the floor oozing organ goo) while large ones might have a 1/10,000 ratio plus a few screwdriver monkeys.

And, honestly, I'd be delighted if the feds can realize some of those economies. I'm sure that there are plenty of grossly inefficient little fiefdoms out there, just waiting to be consolidated.

My concern is twofold: one is that there are non-obvious potential diseconomies of scale(and not just because this is the evil gummin't with its waste and corruption, a lot of the good stories are private sector). Centralization and standardization are all well and good until you end up waiting three weeks and submitting petitions in triplicate just to get some software installed or setting changed, and don't even think about setting up a little wiki or git repo or something for your team with approval from a half dozen departments.

The second issue is, of course, concern over the government contracting process, regulatory capture, revolving door incentives, outright corruption, and whatnot. The magical efficiency of the private sector isn't going to do us a whole lot of good if the project ends up as a cost-plus job for SAIC or one of the other byzantine contracting behemoths that specialize in landing(and on occasion even fulfilling) contracts.

Re:Dear Contractors...

[Improv]

While we're in irony mode, yup, that's why we have the best health care system in the world, we have the best train infrastructure in the world, and why our scientific and cultural literacy is top-notch!

Re:Dear Contractors...

[Anonymous Coward]

they will have a lean, optimized, efficient operation.

I'm sure that it'll be as lean and efficient as most of the companies where I've worked. While those 'darn government bureaucrats' take a lot of heat for like every one who runs for office, incumbent or not. However, personally, I've seen plenty of waste, fraud and abuse in the private sector to know that those issues are just examples of human nature run amok in large organizations.

Of course with government, special problems exist, in particular voters and politicians who instead of trying to improve government seem more willing to destroy it and 'start fresh'. Of course that that does is empower the status quo. Practical people who talk of incremental change and steady leadership are downed out by radicals who demand 'nothing', or 'everything'.

Re:Dear Contractors...

[wintercolby]

There in lies the problem. The fed will likely outsource to Raytheon or Northrup Grumman, who will again contract out to recruiting firms. Before I know it, I'll be getting calls and emails from people who clearly aren't even state-side asking if I'm willing to relocate for a 6 month contract. Of course it would be on my dime to move. That's why they can't get qualified people. Qualified people won't (don't) sub-contract for firms based in India to get paid the lowest going wage and relocate at the same time.

I know this because I get 5 to 10 emails/week asking me to relocate to the DC area for jobs that I've already seen posted on Ratheon or NG's websites. I work with plenty of multinationals, and can easily tell English Grammar from an Indian perspective. Not all Indians speak or write poor English, just the recruiters that have contacted me regarding subcontracting for the Fed through NG and Raytheon.

Bout time

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

Prediction

[maugle]

This being a government IT project, I predict it will take 5 years longer than planned, cost 10x the initial budget, and still never really work quite right.

Re:Prediction

[Blade]

This being an IT project, I predict it will take 5 years longer than planned, cost 10x the initial budget, and still never really work quite right.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Prediction

[ElectricTurtle]

I'm glad I don't work where-ever it is that you do...

Re:Prediction

[timeOday]

The high failure rate for large software projects is well known: "If Las Vegas sounds too tame for you, software might just be the right gamble. Software projects include a glut of risks that would give Vegas oddsmakers nightmares. The odds of a large project finishing on time are close to zero. The odds of a large project being canceled are an even-money bet (Jones 1991)."

Here is another fun page: "Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What's more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation."

I only question why, when large projects are almost universally over-budget or fail altogether, we persist in being surprised and outraged every time? The simple fact is, we don't know how to do it, any more than we know how to land on mars; that is, we can do it, sometimes, but you better know going in it is likely to end in tears.

(In general, it seems to me that most of the problems in government have direct parallels in private industry because they flow from the same underlying cause; the unaffordability of medicare/medicaid corresponds to skyrocketing premiums in the private market; social security corresponds to slashing pensions and now even 401k matches in private industry. But private industry does hold a trump card - they can always cut their losses by tossing people aside and moving on, whereas government is the safety net.)

Re:Prediction

[Sandbags]

I don't know, we started with a network of well over 3,000 servers, and in less than 2 years we've moved almost entirely off Win 2K, virtualized over 1,000 servers, moved to AIX 6 and VIO, delpoyed a VMWare infrastructure, deployed an Exchange architecture in place of a legacy e-mail system, and converted more than half our web apps into SOA and put it on IFLs in a mainframe. We cut from over 3,000 systems, nearly all physical, to under 2500 with near half virtual, and saved significant money in the process vs budgeted outlays. We've reduced our data center footprint by 60-70%, and our power draw is down dramatically.

The forward looking TCO now that the bulk of the migrations are done is impressively smaller.

We did all this while holding to DOD network standards.

The problem the government will have, which we fought with a bit but was no where near as big of a deal, is getting hundreds of small business units to agree to consolidate to central systems, and to convert from "these servers are mine, see, here's where I paid for them" to a metered utilization budget system where hardly any smaller government agency owns it's own infrastructure.

Re:Prediction

[wintercolby]

This is why 401K contributions are declining and insurance premiums are rising . . .

fixed that for me.

IT as a commodity

[DogDude]

Finally, IT is on its way to being considered a commodity, as it should. There's no reason for every organization to maintain their own IT infrastructure any more than there's reason for every organization to maintain their own electricity generation and distribution. Of course, the hordes of IT people won't be happy, as the number of It jobs will continue to fall precipitously, but such is life. Because everybody has access to relatively significant computing power, society as a whole gets to reap the rewards, as opposed to 20 years ago, when only the largest organizations had the money and the manpower to maintain an IT network of any kind.

Re:IT as a commodity

[clang_jangle]

And if you like the way your bank is not liable for identity theft, you'll just love the upcoming government data-filled Cloud!

Re:IT as a commodity

[FuckingNickName]

I am not quite sure what you are talking about. Because everyone has access to yesteryear's supercomputer on their desktop, there is no reason whatever to go back to a 1960s outsourcing model. If you want to distribute load over your machines, go ahead! But why do it over someone else's?

If you think this is going to reduce IT expenditure requirements, you have barely worked a minute in IT. When you outsource, you are simply paying someone else to do your job, plus profit, plus a gaggle of negotiators in middle management collecting their kickbacks, plus downtime costs because your business is less important to them than your business is to you (if you have enterprise e-mail and it has been down more than, say, GMail, you have done something very wrong)...

Re:IT as a commodity

[eln]

I agree with the government's effort to consolidate, because you can take advantage of cheaper per-gigabyte costs and have more robust backup, recovery, disaster recovery, and redundancy solutions when you're using enterprise equipment in large data centers. I think the government has a lot to gain from consolidation in this manner.

However, I don't see that they'd have much to gain by outsourcing. Government data, by nature, is quite a bit more sensitive than just about any private company's data. The kind of security the government needs is not going to come cheaply, and it's arguable that any private company is really capable of providing it (although they say they are). Even if they can provide it, it's doubtful they can do it cheaper than the government could. For people in need of true commodity services like web hosting, outsourcing makes sense because it can be done far cheaper that way. For people in need of large-scale custom solutions, like the government, keeping it in-house is going to tend to be both more secure and less expensive.

Re:IT as a commodity

[maxume]

Stop calling it identity theft.

It as "Banks refusing to take action to prevent fraud".

Re:IT as a commodity

[jimicus]

If you think this is going to reduce IT expenditure requirements, you have barely worked a minute in IT. When you outsource, you are simply paying someone else to do your job, plus profit, plus a gaggle of negotiators in middle management collecting their kickbacks, plus downtime costs because your business is less important to them than your business is to you (if you have enterprise e-mail and it has been down more than, say, GMail, you have done something very wrong)...

I've worked in IT for... a few years. And I agree with the GP.

See, the thing is that while huge organisations will continue to require significant IT infrastructure (either managed inhouse or managed by an outside firm), huge organisations do not provide the majority of jobs in this world. The great majority of jobs are provided by SMBs. The really small SMBs have been outsourcing their IT for years - though "outsourcing their IT" probably translates to "get Dave's son to do it, he knows about computers".

Slightly larger SMBs have been outsourcing their IT to some little company who thought they could earn easy money doing installation and support. Look in the yellow pages, you'll find hundreds of little companies offering services like this. Few of these little outsourcing companies are making serious money - there's simply too much competition in the market.

Larger still SMBs (think medium rather than small, 40-200 employees) may have historically had a full-time IT person. But today there are dozens of companies offering outsourced Exchange, or you can sign up for Google for Domains and the price is so cheap that there is no way a single full-time IT person (even if you ignore their salary) can compete economically - never mind offering four or five nines uptime and spam filtering which doesn't leave people crying. Meanwhile, the cost of a single desktop PC is now so low that it's cheaper to have a spares cupboard containing enough spare PCs to re-equip an entire team at a moment's notice than it is to keep someone on staff to maintain them. Sure, they won't be particularly elegantly managed (there may not be a domain, antivirus may be totally forgotten about, they certainly won't have a standardised build) but let's be honest here - how many non-techies ever display any sign of caring about any of that? And business-specific niche software is frequently sold with a support contract anyway.

Seriously - while anyone who takes careers advice from a stranger on /. probably needs their brains looking at, I'd say if you want steady employment with minimal risk of finding that not only are you redundant from your current post, supply and demand has made you worth considerably less since you last were jobhunting - get yourself a job in the public sector or get the hell out of IT.

Re:IT as a commodity

[tsm_sf]

Few of these little outsourcing companies are making serious money - there's simply too much competition in the market.

Little nit to pick with that... From my perspective it seems like the competent folks quickly reach carrying capacity and simply choose not to expand their operation. I don't know what you mean by "serious money", but having a steady roster of clients who are willing to pay a slight premium for your services doesn't look like a bad way to conduct business.

There may be a lot of competition, there certainly are tons of very intelligent people on the job market, but it seems like there aren't too many people who are both competent and professional.

Better not use Northrop Grumman

[r_jensen11]

If Virginia's IT overhaul is any indication, this is going to be a slow-motion cluster of a mess for the next 10-20 years

Re:Better not use Northrop Grumman

[Anonymous Coward]

If Virginia's IT overhaul is any indication, this is going to be a slow-motion cluster of a mess for the next 10-20 years

Let's not forget that Vivek Kundra was Virginia's CIO when that fiasco took place. I predict that this will be at least as bad as the Virginia situation.

Re:Better not use Northrop Grumman

[mikefocke]

Of course it is

consolidations are always a mess and ones full of job implications mean political interference (I want em in my district).

But you have to do something as the growth of government IT gets out of hand and we can only afford so much.

IIRC, the government consolidated all the payroll systems it had into about 4 pay centers back about 10 years ago. Went from maintaining hundreds to one s/w run 4 places for redundancy. Everybody screamed they needed theirs because it had unique features, they learned to do without or incorporated the features into the new s/w. Wasn't that fairly successful?

While all govt computing is a bit more complex now than a single application was then, still if we are to afford the things we really need, consolidation and standardization makes sense.

Now the contracting and execution...that will be a challenge. And so what if it takes 5 years, if we are going in the right direction and saving money in the long run. Because we can't sustain even the current government spending on what we are willing to vote as taxes.

Re:Better not use Northrop Grumman

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are mistaking him with Anesh Chopra (Chief Technology Officer). I see Kundra (Chief Information Officer) as having been the Secretary of Commerce and Trade for Virgina

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneesh_Chopra

Consolidate

[halcyon1234]

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:Consolidate

[gestalt_n_pepper]

I know that as late as 1995, NASA still had some satellites that were still controlled by some Commodore 64s in a warehouse near White Sands, New Mexico.

I'm sure they've fixed that by now. Probably. Possibly.

Vivek

[bigmattana]

Oh, Vivek, what brilliant thing will you think of next? How much energy will it take to replace all of these server farms? How much energy will be required for the taxpayers to earn the money necessary to pay for it? What about security concerns of consolidating all of this data?

I think Vivek wants to make himself look useful after being exposed as a fraud by John C. Dvorak. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/08/12/special-report-is-us-chief-information-officer-cio-vivek-kundra-a-phony/

Re:Vivek

[drinkypoo]

I think Vivek wants to make himself look useful after being exposed as a fraud by John C. Dvorak. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/08/12/special-report-is-us-chief-information-officer-cio-vivek-kundra-a-phony/

So who will make Dvorak look useful after exposing himself as a fraud?

Sounds promising, but...

[adosch]

I work for a government project in a Federally funded building right now and all I can say is... it sound promising. Common sense, proper planning and innovation gets put on the back burner for under-estimated budgets, bad trade studies, botched planning and wrong decisions being made by the wrong people. In the end, everything will still be money driven and the stove-pipe approach to IT infrastructure will remain the same: everyone will take their OWN budgeted money and set up their OWN infrastructure that will be completely different than project-A over project-B, so you'd spend double that to consolidate it. If you want to use some of project-A's setup (e.g. authentication, storage, ect.) because mis-managed budgets being a huge concern, project-B will get quoted a ridiculous amount of money to jump aboard to do it; much more, in-fact, than it would take to do a trade study, setup of a proof-of-concept test, purchase what you need and implement it. Thus that's how stove-piped approaches become what they are: a mess.

What about "use it or lose it"?

[joocemann]

Didn't read the article, but my experience with government entities is that they receive a specific value of funding each year to spend on gear, training, energy costs, etc.

The nature of the funding goes that if you don't use all of it this year, you get a reduced amount next year. Now this may seem logical -- it may seem like a policy that governs spending. Instead what it is is a policy that drives UNNECESSARY SPENDING.

The places I have been were frugal but appropriate in their spending throughout the year. 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?

In several cases, seeing this strange frenzy of spending I would ask the leadership what was going on. They explained the 'use it or lose it' policy and that in order to maintain the funding they got this year, for next year, they *must* spend it all. I was in conflict because I was taught integrity/honesty and there is no integrity in spending up dads helpful money on worthless junk so as to appear that you still have 'need'.
------

The reason I bring this up is because I am curious if the units that will save money via IT consolidation will actually save us money or if they will be (by obvious standing procedure) driven to spend it in pointless/needless ways.

Discuss? Anyone else experience this?

Re:What about "use it or lose it"?

[rainmayun]

You have to consider the personal incentives for managers with budget authority. If you manage a shrinking department, there's no rewards for spending less money. Your prestige and responsibility shrink, and your career path dwindles. For better or for worse, all of the incentives for budget managers are towards bigger and bigger spending allocations.

Re:What about "use it or lose it"?

[jwl17330536]

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.

Nice idea in theory...

[hrieke]

Now just wait for a data center to be scheduled to close in some Congressman's home district and see how big of a block is put into place.

History to Repeat Itself?

[lax-goalie]

I have no problem with the CONCEPT of consolidation, but Virginia's IT outsourcing/consolidation project to Northrup Grumman happened on Kundra's watch. It is an unmitigated disaster.

Years into it, there's not even a complete inventory of the systems that NG is supposed to be managing for the Commonwealth, and at least as of a few months ago, NG couldn't even produce an invoice for the Commonwealth to pay that had more than six or eight line items on it.

I sat through a special meeting of the House Committee on Science and Technology on the issue a few months ago, and the legislature is NOT happy about the situation. Privately, you will hear from them words like "gross negligence" to "I'm convinced it's corruption". The Delegates who engineered the legislation enabling the IT outsourcing are especially pissed.

No disrespect to Kundra, but I don't think he's the right guy to oversee it.

Free software and owned infrastructure

[Statecraftsman]

To run a sovereign state, it is necessary for all systems to be based on free software and to be run on public infrastructure. That means no privately hosted cloud computing and no proprietary software. How else are we to ever find out how our government is run?

Re:Free software and owned infrastructure

[Improv]

But hey, that's the holocost of doing business! ;)

Re:Free software and owned infrastructure

[cynyr]

despite my better judgement,
How in 10 years do you plan on reading those closed format autocad files of the long ago built government building? or moving them to the new system?
How about all the training docs in pdf reader 10 format when the current version is 293?
how about using that critical piece of software that needs activation servers, from a company that disappears suddenly in 4 years from now?

Now I would agree that allowing the free market to participate is a good idea, but if you are biding it should be a work for hire that gives all the source and toolchain requirments(sources for those too), source for any other software dependencies(their build chains, etc etc) and it should provide some way to output the data in a easy to parse format. Otherwise how can "we, the people" ensure that our government remains viable into the future and is able to archive the data.(no a laser printer output on bleached paper won't cut it).

Re:Free software and owned infrastructure

[gtall]

There is no free market, go bitch slap some sense into Ron Paul. Free market in software, hah? Explain MS, please. Free market in drugs? No way are we going to let the drug companies put any magic elixir on the market without adequate FDA approval. Want to put a new vehicle on the road that rolls over at the first gust of wind? Nope. The market is not free and cannot be free if we value survival. Put Paul in your pipe and smoke him if you like, but you are just pissing in the wind.

Re:Where do I send my resume?

[Remus Shepherd]

This is no joke. I work at one of the biggest government data centers, and we consider Google to be alternately either our best friend or the people who will put us out of business. Google is our biggest domestic consumer -- I think they've already sucked down all the data we have here on site. I could easily see them positioning themselves to take over the ingesting and archiving responsibilities.

Google likely already has a copy of all the nonclassified data that the government is holding. The only people with more appetite for data are the Chinese. If the government decides to outsource data centers, that's where they'll be going.

TEOTWAWKI.bat ... every 108 minutes

[knuckledraegger]

4 8 15 16 23 42

Re:TEOTWAWKI.bat ... every 108 minutes

[knuckledraegger]

WHAT???? You mean to say nothing will happen if the batch file doesn't run? Strange. as I write this, I get a sudden feeling of deja vu.

Re:Let the NSA do it

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Wow. I definitely can't think of any potential downsides to putting a military entity, with a strong history of not always sticking to its legal role of foreign intelligence gathering, in charge of all IT for our ostensibly civilian government...

Because IT is a pretty damn banal subject, your proposal doesn't elicit the visceral distaste that "Hey, we should let the army take over policing. The army has 1) mad combat skillz 2) massive firepower and 3) the security chops to actually keep the streets safe."; but it is basically in the same class.

Good idea, but huge problems are coming

[ErichTheRed]

I've actually done a lot of smaller server consolidation projects. In most cases, the results are great...those lonely database and file servers that get hits 5 or 6 times a day are all combined into one big box that actually uses all the hardware capacity.

The biggest problems I've seen with VMs are the project managers who treat it as magic, never-ending capacity. The new favorite phrase in IT project management circles seems to be, "Oh, we'll just build a VM for it." Problem is, unless someone else is hosting your data center, you can't just call up and order more capacity without paying for more hardware.

Second-biggest with a consolidation like this is incomplete requirements. Lowest-bidder contractors are not going to do a good job of gathering every single requirement...even high-bidder contractors have problems with this. And the problem is that the more they miss, the worse the fallout. A certain large company I used to work for found this out the hard way moving their inhouse data center to one of the big IT services companies. I'm a systems guy, and had all my stuff well documented. Others were pissed off they were losing their jobs and intentionally withheld information...the contractors didn't follow up, and a lot of last minute scrambling had to be done to complete the migration.

Third problem for a government IT consolidation? Some huge services company like Accenture or IBM is going to win the bid and staff the project with dumbasses they pulled off the street in order to maximize profits. (Yes, this happened in my case in point #2 above...the sales staff presented the A Squad and swapped them out as soon as the contract was signed.) Not that government employees are rockstars, but they at least have a vested interest in keeping the data safe. IBM will probably win the contract too, given their involvement with government systems already. IBM has been so India-happy over the last ten years that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the (non security critical) work ends up there.

Just like PMs treat VMs as magic hardware, CIOs treat outsourcers as magic black boxes that flawlessly run their IT operations. Unfortunately, the reality is not as sunny beneath the surface!

Damn them to hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nixon.

[Buelldozer]

Nixon took us off the gold standard during the Civil War? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Suspension_of_the_gold_standard

THAT BASTARD!

Re:Nixon.

[Chris Mattern]

Nixon took us off the gold standard during the Civil War?

Don't you know yourself no history? He did it during the Great Depression!

Re:Nixon.

[Dun Malg]

family farms dying

Please. Family farms started dying around the end of the 19th century, when mechanization started to make operating a farm a business rather than a family pastime. Various forms of farm subsidies managed to stave off the inevitable decline of "pa and his sons working the farm" for quite some time, but by the 70's, the ride was just plain fucking over. Seriously, in this day of GPS guided multi-hundred-thousand dollar combine harvesters, there simply ain't no efficient way to operate a "family farm". The reason we have all the agri-business corps running giant farms is that technology has allowed tremendous economies of scale. There are a number of families that still manage to run small businesses based on farming, but that's because they run them as businesses. Most of them don't even live on the land they farm anymore, because there's no advantage to living on site when all you are is a manager and your kids don't work on the farm. The quaint notion of a man making a living hitching a plow to an ox while his wife sows behind him is ancient history.