State Government’s Data Center

Roadmap: Evolving Strategies & Technologies

Introduction
As technology continues to evolve, so does the management of state
government data centers. For more than a decade, the strategic plan for
state data centers has called for consolidation and optimization, with
anticipated financial and efficiency benefits. State information technology
(IT) directors have overseen and managed these efforts to realize state
chief information officers’ priorities.

In 2007, a National Association of State Chief Information Officers

(NASCIO) survey indicated 14% of responding states had completed data
center consolidation efforts.1 By 2016, that percentage had grown to 42%.2
Consolidation and optimization remain a priority, ranking at number four
in the most recent list of state CIO priorities.3 As states complete the task
of consolidation, it is critical they have a long-range vision of where their
data center operations are headed.
NASTD Staff Contact:
Mark McCord While many states continue to maintain existing data centers, both state-
Executive Director owned and leased, there is a definite shift toward leveraging public cloud
NASTD services. This aligns with the movement toward a managed services model
NASTD is a dynamic,
of IT. NASCIO’s 2019 State CIO Survey indicated 35% of the states want
member-driven association to maintain their state-owned data centers and 17% plan on expanding,
committed to advancing the but 48% say they wish to downsize their state-owned data centers.4 The
effective use of information response to the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the integral
technology to achieve role of state data centers and the broad opportunities of cloud services.
operational efficiency in
state government. Cybersecurity also remains a priority as states work to ensure their data is
protected. New technologies in compute, storage and network are enabling
For more information,
visit www.nastd.org
efficient and agile solutions to be implemented, while workforce stabilization
remains an ongoing challenge.
1776 Avenue of the States
Lexington, KY 40511-8482 The results of the following survey show how state government IT directors
Phone: (859) 244-8187 are driving the evolution of the state data centers in these key areas to align
mmccord@csg.org with the strategic direction set by their CIOs.
Methodology
The National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD), with the assistance
of NASCIO, distributed an online survey to all 50 state central IT authorities in
December 2019. Forty-one (41) states submitted responses to the survey: Alabama,
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missis-
sippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North
Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South
Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,
Wisconsin and Wyoming.

NASTD’s Research Committee, comprised of state government IT members, a

member representative from the private sector and association staff, developed
the survey questions with additional input from the association’s corporate affiliate
members and NASCIO staff.

The survey questions addressed six areas of data center management: general, security,
compute, storage, network and workforce. This document summarizes the findings
from that survey.

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Survey Results
1. What is the organizational structure of your state’s data center(s)?

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Consolidated
with some legacy
distributed
Completely
consolidated

Partially
outsourced

Fully
outsourced

Completely
distributed

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS

2. What is/are the operating model(s) for your state’s consolidated

data center?

61% 24% 5%

Owned by state and Other Owned by state

operated by state and operated
employees/contractors by third party

5% 5% 0%

Private cloud services Public cloud/ Do not have a

provided by third party government state consolidated
at their location cloud services data center
Note: Ten states responded “other”, indicating mostly public/private hybrid models.

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3. For those states that are maintaining or growing state-owned facilities,
what areas are you focusing on? (select all that apply)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Cloud solutions
AREAS OF FOCUS

Disaster recovery
Network fabrics
Multi-tenant facility
Edge computing
Power systems
HVAC system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

NUMBER OF STATES

4. Does your state leverage a multisourcing services integrator (MSI)?

51% No, but considering

37% No, and not interested
10% Is operational
2% In process of implementation

5. How does your statewide data center administration oversee out-

sourced/cloud services for statewide cost allocation plans (SWCAPs)?

44% 33% 18% 5%

Through both billing Through the Through the What’s SWCAP?

and the approval/ approval/purchasing billing process
purchasing process process

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6. What is your data center’s approach to security? (select all that apply)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30
APPROACH TO SECURITY

Risk based

Defense in depth

SIEM w/SOAR

Zero trust model

Machine learning overlay

to security trust model
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

NUMBER OF STATES

7. B
 y whom is your data center’s cybersecurity monitoring performed?
(select all that apply)

38 20 7 STATE
1 0
STATES
STATES STATES STATES

State Third party not Third party Other Don’t

employees responsible for responsible for monitor
data center data center
operations operations

8. Does your state leverage a cloud access security broker (CASB)?

Emerging/pilots - 22%
Not considered - 22%
Awareness - 44%
Operational - 12%

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9. B
 y whom is your data center’s cybersecurity risk assessment performed?
(select all that apply)

35 27 4 1
STATE
0
STATES STATES STATES STATES

State Third party not Third party Other Don’t do risk

employees responsible for responsible for assessments
data center data center
operations operations

10. S
 ecurity assessment results and data center budget requests and
allocations are .

60% Somewhat correlated

27.5% Independent of each other

12.5% Strongly correlated

11. Which compute platforms does your data center provide? (select all
that apply)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
COMPUTE PLATFORMS

On-premise infrastructure

Private cloud

Multiple public clouds

Multiple government clouds

Single government cloud


Single public cloud
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
NUMBER OF STATES

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12. I n which compute platforms do you plan on investing for the next
3-5 years? (select all that apply)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
COMPUTE PLATFORMS

Government cloud(s)

Multiple public cloud

On-premise infrastructure

Private cloud

Single public cloud

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
NUMBER OF STATES

13. F
 or those utilizing virtualization technologies, what are your plans
for the next 3-5 years?
0 5 10 15 20 25
VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGY PLANS

No change in strategy

Migrate virtualized workloads to off-premises cloud

Continue running multiple virtualization technologies

Consolidate to one virtualization technology

Other

Expand the number of virtualization technologies

Change current virtualization technology to a different virtualization technology

0 5 10 15 20 25
PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS

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14. What is your program’s current maturity toward software-defined data
center (SDDC) or software-defined infrastructure (SDI)?

47.5% 37.5% 12.5% 2.5% 0%

Awareness Emerging/pilots Operational Not considered Foundational

15. What is your program’s current maturity toward containers and

microservices?

54% 34% 10% 2% 0%

Awareness Emerging/pilots Operational Not considered Foundational

16. What is your program’s configuration management database (CMDB)

used as? (select all that apply)

25
NUMBER OF STATES

20

15

10

0
Operationally Billing Data Architecture
integrated tool resource warehouse repository
USES FOR CMDB

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17.  What is your state’s intent with mainframe compute in the next
3-5 years?

24%
Leverage mainframe as a service

76% Leverage premise mainframe compute

18. What is your expected data storage growth in the next 3-5 years?

EXPECTED DATA STORAGE GROWTH

100%
0% growth
90%

1-10% growth
PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS

80%

70% 11-25% growth

60% 26-50% growth

50%
>51% growth
40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

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19. What technologies are included in your current storage infrastructure?
(select all that apply)

0 10 20 30 40 50

Storage area networks (SAN)/

network attached storage (NAS)
Solid state drives (SSD)/flash

Data replication
STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES

File

Cloud storage

Hard disk drives (HDD)

Virtual tape

Converged/hyperconverged (HCI)

Object block

Software defined storage (SDS)

Physical tape

0 10 20 30 40 50

NUMBER OF STATES

20. What format currently holds most of your primary storage?

80% 7.5% 5% 5% 2.5 %

Storage area Solid state Cloud storage Hard disk Converged or

networks (SAN) or drives (SSD) drives (HDD) hyperconverged
network attached or flash (HCI)
storage (NAS)

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21. In what storage technology do you plan on investing the greatest
amount of budget in the next 3-5 years? (select all that apply)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Cloud storage

Converged/hyperconverged
STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES

Flash/SSD

Data replication

Software-defined storage

Storage security

Networking

Virtual tape

Hard disk drives (HDD)

Physical tape

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

NUMBER OF STATES

22. What is your program’s current maturity toward software-defined

networking (SDN)?

46% 39% 15% 0% 0%

Emerging/pilots Awarenesss Operational Foundational Not considered

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23. Which staffing skill sets do you consider critical to your data center
evolution in the next 3-5 years? (select all that apply)

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Cloud integration

Cybersecurity
Infrastructure/platform
automation
SDN/SDDC experience
STAFFING SKILLS

Infrastructure operations

DevOps experience

Application modernization

Business analytics

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Contract management

Facility management

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

NUMBER OF STATES

24. Do you have any comments that sum up your state’s current and
future data center strategy?
• We are looking heavily at cloud, and with the sunset of one of two data centers, will
be looking to leverage cloud to provide disaster recovery for our remaining site. To
sum it up, we’re looking to leverage the cloud wherever it makes business sense.

• Data center consolidation continues but new IT investments target cloud-based

services for application modernization and digital government transformation.

• Move away from state-owned on-prem data centers to a “cloud smart” approach.

• Data center strategy focuses on leveraging cloud capabilities and automation to

improve the quality of services being provided.

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 • Move private cloud to hyperconverged, develop self-service portal for agencies,
hybrid cloud strategy.

• Modernizing on-premise end of service life infrastructure as a transition to full

hybrid cloud implementation.

• Moving to a cloud ecosystem that encompasses the integration of both public

cloud and an on-premise managed solution that resides within the state’s
data centers.

• The state’s strategy is to continue to look for opportunities to deliver high quality
services, value and cost transparency.

• Every available IT option is being investigated. The IT industry is now turning

over every five months with new innovations, not eighteen months as in the past.

Summary
General
The push for consolidation and optimization has resulted in 86% of state respondents
indicating their state data center’s organizational structure is completely consolidated
(15%) or consolidated with some legacy distributed (71%). Sixty-one percent (61%) of
state repondents still own their data centers and operate them with state employees,
contractors or a combination of both.

States that are maintaining or growing state-owned facilities are focusing their attention
on cloud solutions (90%), disaster recovery (67%) and WAN and data center-based
network fabrics (50%). While only 12% of responding states are using or implementing
a multisource services integrator (MSI), 51% are considering using one.

Security
Security remains the top priority for state government IT. Survey respondents are
emphasizing two approaches to data center security: a risk-based approach (69%)
and a defense-in-depth approach (67%). States are monitoring their data center’s
cybersecurity with a combination of state employees (93%) and third parties not
responsible for data center operations (49%).

New services are taking off as state respondents are either using (12%), piloting
(22%) or considering (44%) a cloud access security broker (CASB). As with security
monitoring practices, states are performing data center cybersecurity risk assessments
with a combination of state employees (85%) and third parties not responsible for
operations (66%).

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Maintaining a high security profile with limited funding is an ongoing issue. Sixty percent
(60%) of the states identified the results of security assessments and data center
budget requests as somewhat correlated, with only 12% seeing a strong correlation.

Compute
State data center computing is evolving. More than half of the states are providing
on-premise infrastructure (98%), private cloud offerings (76%) and multiple public
cloud offerings (54%). Looking ahead three to five years, states anticipate investing
in government clouds (80%), multiple public clouds (73%), on-premise infrastructure
(71%) and private cloud (71%) with few focusing on a single public cloud offering (12%).

Most states anticipate very little change in the data center virtualization technology
solutions they will be using in the next three to five years, but some do indicate a
consolidation of technologies and/or migration to the cloud.

In other areas, 85% of the states are either considering or piloting software-defined
data centers or software-defined infrastructure. Eighty-eight percent (88%) are
considering or piloting containers and microservices. States utilizing a configuration
management database are mostly using it as an operationally integrated tool (67%)
and billing resource (61%).

Finally, 76% of state respondents say they will leverage mainframe as a service as their
mainframe computing strategy for the next three to five years.

Storage
All but one of the states responding to the survey anticipate some data storage growth
in the next three to five years, with the biggest percentage (37%) projecting growth in
the range of 26-50%. Twenty-seven percent (27%) of the states anticipate more than
51% growth.

Eighty percent (80%) of the states have most of their primary storage allocated to
storage area networks and network-attached storage. States identified cloud storage
(73%), converged/hyperconverged storage (63%), data replication and flash/SSD
(45%) as the four biggest areas of investment in the next three to five years.

Network
Eighty-five percent (85%) of state respondents are considering or piloting software-
defined networking for their data centers, with 14% already operational.

Workforce
Attracting and retaining qualified staff continues to be of concern for state govern-
ment IT. The survey respondents deemed a wide range of skill sets as critical to their
data center’s staff in the next three to five years. Of the 11 areas listed in the survey,

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more than half of the states identified the following skills as critical: cloud integration
(90%), cybersecurity (88%), infrastructure/platform automation and SDN/SDDC
experience (66%), infrastructure operations and DevOps experience (54%) and
application modernization skills (51%).

Outlook
The results of the survey reveal many changes in the road ahead, with states shifting
direction toward hybrid approaches and emerging technologies to operate their data
centers. Cloud solutions will include both government and private offerings with new
and innovative features. The challenge of securing and governing the data will remain
a key focus. With states projecting growth in data storage requirements, efficiency and
cost savings will also remain a priority and will likely drive converged/hyperconverged
storage solutions. Managing these data centers will require a workforce with diverse
skills, whether the state is using its own employees or solution services.

1
Enterprise Data Center Consolidation in the States: Strategies & Business Justification, NASCIO:
https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NASCIO-EnterpriseDataCenterConsolidation.pdf

2
The 2016 State CIO Survey: The Adaptable State CIO, NASCIO:
https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NASCIO_2016_State_CIO_Survey.pdf

3
State CIO Top Ten Policy and Technology Priorities for 2020, NASCIO:
https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/NASCIO_CIOTopTenPriorities.pdf

4
The Responsive State CIO: Connecting to the Customer, NASCIO:
https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019StateCIOSurvey.pdf

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Acknowledgements
Along with the NASTD and NASCIO members who submitted responses to the
survey, NASTD thanks the following for their contributions:

• Brian Allison, Lead Channel Manager - Public Sector, AT&T

• Paul Czarnecki, Communications and Research Manager, National

Association of State Technology Directors

• John Hoffman, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Information

Resources, state of Texas

• Tony Lupinacci, Enterprise Architect, Division of Information Technology,

state of Rhode Island

• Mark McCord, Executive Director, National Association of State

Technology Directors

• Doug Robinson, Executive Director, National Association of State

Chief Information Officers

• Brad Steele, Senior Director of Unified Communications, Executive Office

of Technology Services and Security, commonwealth of Massachusetts

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