In August of 2016, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer released a memorandum detailing the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) – a program that supercedes the government’s Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) and fulfills the data center requirements of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA).

Under the DCOI, agencies have to establish a data center strategy, work to replace data center infrastructure with more efficient infrastructure – such as cloud services – where applicable, and optimize their infrastructure with new technologies when they become available.

The concept of the DCOI is that by eliminating data centers and replacing physical infrastructure with cloud infrastructure, the federal government can eliminate OPEX costs for power, cooling, and equipment maintenance. They can also drastically reduce the capex costs of provisioning new applications and services, while brining these applications to market more quickly and efficiently. The DCOI also enables agencies to focus their limited resources on better protecting a smaller IT infrastructure at a time when cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated and active.

To learn more about the DCOI, the reasons why it’s being implemented across the federal government, and what benefits agencies will realize from meeting DCOI requirements, the Federal Technology Insider Podcast sat down with Jay McCargo and John Stanton of ARServices.

ARServices is a government contractor based out of Alexandria, VA that is on the front line of agency data center optimization efforts. In fact, ARServices recently announced that it was chosen to spearhead a new program that will help the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) optimize their data centers. Jay McCargo is the President and CEO of ARServices, while John Stanton managed the companies work and activities on behalf of the DLA.

Here is what they had to say: