The federal government could save as much as a cool $1 trillion by 2020 by embracing several IT efforts such as virtualization and cloud computing, according to newly released report from the Technology CEO Council. In a report titled “One Trillion Reasons,” the IT industry advocacy group outlines seven broad initiatives that it says would be better suited to address the country’s mounting deficit than “draconian, across-the-board spending reductions — or equally sweeping tax hikes.”
Technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing could help the feds reduce the number of data centers they run. Combine the reduction in facilities with techniques such as boosting CPU utilization (the current average for the government is 25 percent) and using smarter, more efficient cooling, and the federal government would see a significant drop in operational costs, possibly as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years.
