John Gilroy’s Federal News Radio interview with the CEO of ThunderCat Technology, Tom Deierlein. Air date: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 on WFED 1500AM
ThunderCat Technology works with federal agencies to help them comply with the federal mandate to manage data centers more efficiently. This includes reducing the physical number of data centers as well as improving the efficiency of moving data between datacenters.
During the interview, Tom emphasized three agencies his company has assisted:
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) grew from thirty two offices to more than 1600. The initial design for the wide area network was over capacity. Tom discusses how ThunderCat selected technology from Riverbed to optimize the CBP network.
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) needed to improve the way it handled disaster recovery. Working with Booz Allen, ThunderCat selected technology from NetAPP to improve its Network Attached Storage.
The Army Corps of Engineers designed a system using VMware, NetAPP, and consulting services from ThunderCat in order to reach agency goals.
One differentiator for ThunderCat is that they try to educate federal IT professionals in making the tough transition to fewer data centers. To this effect, they partnered with NetAPP, Knight Point Systems, and Riverbed to produce a web site called FDCCI Connect (Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative). The goal is to curate information on best practices for reducing the numbers of data centers.
The site gives details on all six phases of the FDCCI initiative: self-assessment, application mapping, strategic decisions, optimization execution as well as ongoing support. FDCCI Connect provides blogs and videos from federal IT leaders to help with this challenging transition.
ARMATURE has over a dozen years of experience assisting complex quality assurance and compliance programs. Please read this ARMATURE case study on how Managed Services can coincide with these implementations.
John Gilroy hosts a weekly radio show on Federal News Radio, appears regularly as “The Computer Guy” on WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Further information about John and his thought-provoking comments on the technology industry can be found at John’s blog.
