Two large federal agencies, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are planning to update their IT infrastructure for the betterment of their services for their consumers.

The FDA is considering novel methodologies for providing IT infrastructure services to help its approximately 25,000 consumers who are handling high-performance and customized work, which is presently stored in the agency’s four data centers and the Amazon Web Services GovCloud.

As per a researcher, the FDA’s Office of Information Management and Technology is also interested in cloud solutions, such as public and private clouds, authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, to enhance capacity and reduce the cost of IT infrastructure.

Rowing Federation of India (RFI) said, “To the extent possible, FDA would like to eliminate all FDA owned or leased data centers within four (4) years.” “Moreover, recognizing that a hybrid method might be more helpful, particularly when it comes to meeting the FDA’s united business needs and helping early adopters,” he said.

FDA, in a recent story regarding modernizing its infrastructure, said it wants to enhance standards, streamline processes, support innovation, and reduce the expense and work required to maintain agreements. It is exclusively looking for engineering support for troubleshooting, diagnostics, extended use of automation and continuous integration, transparency in monitoring cost data, testing, mitigation and security services, and enhanced support for DevOps (DevSecOps). In the meantime, the DHS is trying to plot a data center amalgamation proposal.

The agency, on July 10, 2020, released a draft solicitation for next-generation data center and cloud optimization support services for its organization. The data center is owned by NASA and operated by its contractor; however, DHS utilizes approximately 35,000 sq. ft in the provision.

To save cost and to produce allowances for factors that are pushing operations into the commercial cloud, DHS had proposed to merge data center operations at the Mississippi Facility called DC1 and shutter operations at Virginia location called DC2. Unfortunately, the plan did not work, and that was the end of DC2. The government is expected to create an instructing vehicle in a future financial year to acquire services and support FDA’s Next Generation Data Center.

Thus, draft solicitation is anticipated to change the present location to support services that will provide a hybrid IT hosting environment to incorporate and manage co-located and multi-cloud applications.