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Federal Government to Increase Virtual Systems by 2021

  • March 29 2016, 1:46 pm

  • by Wes Sovis

  • General

Feds Going to the Cloud

According to a survey and subsequent report published by a public and for-profit collaboration entity known as MeriTalk, Federal IT administrators hope to increase the number of virtualized systems from 28% to 48% by 2021. The survey was administered to 150 Federal IT professionals, and aimed at assessing the current state of federal IT infrastructure. The survey focused on important data center issues like speed, footprint, security and power consumption. The implications for the web development community are immense, as developing applications and functionality to work within the additional, new virtual infrastructure means plenty of opportunity for business growth. 

Virtualization Puts Onus on Security Improvements

Here's another very telling statistic from the survey - 97% of the 150 professionals surveyed say that their Federal agency needs to improve security in the next five years. Additional security measures, employee oversight measures, and hiring/contracting security experts are measures most of the administrators mentioned as next steps for improvement. 

Reducing Physical Footprint

Another advantage of increasing investment in virtual infrastructure directly relates to the respondents' proposition for reducing the size and quantity of physical data centers in operation. By consolidating physical assets like servers, storage, and other hardware into centers with more cost-effective cooling and power sources, the Feds hope to see much lower overhead in the coming years. 

Opportunity for Savings

According to the report, Federal IT data base managers said they can save up to 20% of their current budget expenditures by implementing more virtual machines, lower cooling costs, and shrinking a data center's physical footprint. That 20% savings represents up to $10 billion saved across all data centers in the United States. 

You can view the entire report by visiting MeriTalk's website

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