Agencies to shutter 178 data centers in 2012

The Office of Management and Budget announced Wednesday that federal agencies will shut down 178 data centers in 2012.

In April, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra reported that agencies had closed 39 federal data centers in the previous five months and were on track to close nearly 100 more before the end of the year. On Wednesday, OMB said the total number of closed centers so far is 81, and that 114 more will be closed by the end of 2011.

That means, OMB says, that a total of 373 centers will be closed by the end of next year. Obama administration officials say that puts them ahead of schedule toward meeting a goal of shutting down 800 centers by 2015 -- which they say will save $3 billion.

Kundra's 25-point plan to reform federal IT management includes the data center consolidation goal, to be accomplished either by consolidating data into existing centers or by moving information to rented data space in the cloud.

OMB says the number of federal data centers rose from 432 in 1998 to more than 2,000 before the launch of its initiative to close centers. That "proliferation of infrastructure," OMB says, "has created unnecessary and redundant costs for taxpayers."