The government of Colorado has completed its migration to a state-owned data center.
First reported by State Scoop, this marks the end of a two-year process exiting the leased eFORT data center and entering the state-owned Lakewood Data Center.
The migration is expected to see as much as $2 million saved in leasing costs annually, while giving access to greater cloud capabilities and increased scalability.
The project has been ongoing since June 2022, with the Governor's Office of Information Technology (OIT) seeking to reduce technology debt and modernize its systems.
Around 26 state agencies had their physical or virtual IT hosted in the eFORT data center, which had been used by Colorado since 2006 via a colocation lease.
Throughout the migration, the state said that 300 OIT staff members spent a collective 19,000 hours working on the project and more than 1,000 pieces of obsolete IT equipment was disposed of. This includes the removal of 2,500 pounds of ethernet cabling, with 145 racks at the eFORT data center also being retired.
In a video published by the OIT, Dana Thorson, director of OIT's data center and mainframe operations, said that around 12.6 percent of the equipment at eFORT was migrated to the Lakewood Data Center, nine percent was migrated to the cloud, and 40 percent was fully decommissioned.
Thorson told State Scoop via email: “Exiting the costly leased eFORT Data Center was a colossal effort requiring close collaboration across multiple state agencies. From planning to completion, we migrated 26 agencies and OIT out of the leased data center in less than three years, which is not a small feat. Exiting eFORT paves the way for optimization, modernization, and innovation while saving the state over $1.8m yearly in lease expenses.
“I want to thank the many team members and our leadership. Through long nights over many weekends, our teams came together to make this a reality, and they are a testament to public service in Colorado. We look forward to a bright future for our state data center operations.”
Howell Construction worked on the new Lakewood Data Center project. According to a case study from Howell, the project was a 10,000 sq ft (929 sqm) data center upgrade.
The case study adds: "It included an upgrade of the existing main electrical room, including the demolition of a 3,000 amp Main Distribution Board, 3,000amp Automatic Transfer Switch, 625KVA UPS and Batteries, and additional panelboards and transformers. All were replaced with a new 3000A Main distribution board, 3000A ATS with a closed transition maintenance bypass switch, two new 1000KVA UPS' with Lithion ION [sic] batteries, and UPS maintenance bypass cabinet and additional panelboard."
