A few years ago, the federal government realized that there was a lot of inefficiency within agencies in terms of their IT infrastructure. So, in 2010, the Office of Management and Budget began an effort to restructure the IT needs of governmental workplaces to try to cut down on redundancies and unnecessary IT spending.
After years of working on the problem, the OMB has made some sizeable cost reductions. The Government Accountability Office, charged with creating a report on the OMB's IT restructure, found that this effort resulted in $3.6 billion in cost savings and avoidances between 2011 and 2014.
A closer look
Although 22 out of the 27 agencies that the OMB gave restructuring requirements to did not fully meet those benchmarks, overall, quite a lot of money was saved through IT reform. In terms of newer technology being implemented within the OMB's restructuring plans, perhaps the most interesting of these savings came from virtualization.
Specifically, the Department of Defense saved $260.35 million between the fiscal years of 2011 and 2014 by operating system reductions and virtualization, thereby cutting down on staff and facilities needed to run their operation. Virtualization has been known to allow for these kinds of savings, as it gives organizations the unique opportunity to consolidate their hardware needs without dramatically affecting workloads and end-user functionality.
The DoD was not the only agency to see savings through virtualization, either. The Department of Commerce also reported that since it had moved its IT infrastructure to a virtualized space, it had seen a combined cost avoidance of around $11.8 million.
What this means for your company
Even though government agencies are different in a lot of way from the average private sector business, the fact still remains that IT restructuring is a great way to cut both inefficiency and spending in the workplace.
Basically, what the GAO's report showed is that many organizations are not as efficient as they could be with their IT needs. It also argued for the importance of virtualization as a tool to reduce hardware and facility needs, as shown through the massive savings garnered by both the DoD and DoC.
For this reason, every company that wants to cut down its current IT expenses should absolutely consider virtualization through ISG Technology. Not only do we provide server virtualization, a great way to cut down on hardware spending, ISG Technology also works with companies to implement desktop virtualization plans. With ISG Tech and virtualization, expect to see costs go down and efficiency go up.