A study by MeriTalk has found that 60 percent of federal information technology managers believe their agencies could save 20 percent of  their IT budget through data center modernization — amounting to savings of $10 billion by 2021.
“The IT revolving capital fund in the President’s budget will play a significant role in enabling federal data center modernization to unlock these savings,” Steve O’Keeffe, founder of MeriTalk, said in a release issued Tuesday.
MeriTalk surveyed 150 federal IT professionals in January and February about their outlook on federal data centers in terms of power consumption, capacity, physical footprint, speed and security.
The study shows 11 percent of federal IT managers say their agency data centers currently stand prepared to fulfill mission requirements while less than 5 percent said the same of their data centers’ capability by 2021.
Security policies, leadership, data center footprint, cloud migration, power consumption, budget, legacy systems and bandwidth are among the concerns cited by federal IT managers.
According to MeriTalk, the respondents did express confidence in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, with 60 percent of agencies saying they will work to meet Cloud First requirements by 2021.
