Why the US Government has so many data centers

[nick at foobar.org (Nick Hilliard)]

Christopher Morrow wrote:
> because .... at least:
>   o safe handling of media is important (did the janitor just walk off
> with backup tapes/ disks/etc?)
>   o 'a machine under your desk' is not a production operation.
>      (if you think it is, please stop, think again and move that
> service to conditioned power/cooling/ethernet)
> 
> I'm sure there are other reasons, but honestly those 2 are great starters...

The alternative may be:

- issue RFT for hosting / colocation facilities + high speed resilient
connectivity between colo and local network + associated equipment to
make this work, or

- building out enterprise-grade comms room in local office

This can be hard for public sector bodies to do and depending on the
value of the data hosting or the amount of kit that needed to be hosted,
it may also not be easy to justify.

Nick