The US Army is targeting closure of 185 data centers by the end of fiscal year 2015, as part of a government-wide data center consolidation initiative that calls for more than 800 facilities to be closed by the end of that year.

Army major general Mark Bowman told Defense Systems that the agency intends to close 27 data centers in 2011 alone. The army is leveraging an ongoing realignment and closure of its bases to identify data centers that can be shuttered.

“That gives us a wonderful opportunity to see what should close and what shouldn’t close,” Bowman said. Bowman acts as director of architecture, operations, networks and space at the army CIO’s office.

Virtualization is a key part of the consolidation process for the agency looking to increase its server utilization rates. “I would guess that our average server utilization rate is pretty low,” Bowman said. “It’s probably in the 30% range.”

In addition to emphasizing virtualization, the army is changing its approach to procurement of IT services, where every new system often received its own server in a data center.

The new approach will be to see whether a new service can be provided by the Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides compute and network services for the US military around the world. Next step will be to look for a commercial provider to use for the service, if the application permits it.

Using an army-only data center will be the last resort, Bowman said.