New York City officials have officially launched a new data center in downtown Brooklyn, laying the first cornerstone in the city's IT consolidation initiative. IBM is managing first phase of the initiative, which involves consolidating and modernizing systems of select initial agencies in the new data center, as DatacenterDynamics reported in January.

The first phase is to take place over the first year of the facility's operation and to consolidate 19 agencies' systems. A five-year plan is in place to consolidate systems of a total of 40 agencies. The broader IT modernization effort is called Citywide IT Infrastructure Services (CITIServ).

Learn more about data center consolidation and IT modernization at the DatacenterDynamics conference in New York City on 10 March, 2011

In connection with the 18,000-sq-ft facility's launch, the city's mayor Michael Bloomberg said the new data center will reduce IT work city agencies do and free their resources to focus more on the services they are tasked with providing.

"New York City is constantly employing new technology to improve and modernize services for New Yorkers, but until now the infrastructure behind that technology has been fragmented," he said.

Carole Post, who oversees the city's IT department, said some agencies had already started the process of consolidating and re-purposing disparate data centers they used and some would start the process soon. The agencies currently use dozens of data centers, many of which are of subpar quality.

"The value of having this [new] data center now available is that it provides the capacity and services to ensure seamless transitions for those agencies, particularly those with systems nearing end-of-life or seeking to expand to meet space, storage or power needs," she said.

First systems to have been migrated onto the new centralized CITIServ environment are the media and entertainment IT operations of the mayor's office, IT service desk of the Department of Sanitation and the HR Connect application used by the Department of Education.

Work to consolidate systems used by the finance department and Citywide Administrative Services is currently ongoing.

The initial data center's cost to the city is US$11.7m, which includes hardware, software and facilities infrastructure build-out. The annual leasing cost is $2.7m. It is expected to save the city $100m over the next five years.