Fred Duball is the Data Center Practice Principal, Workload and Cloud Solutions at HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector. Previously he served as the Executive Director and Deputy CIO for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us again today, Fred. Before discussing HP Data Center Services in greater detail, please tell us about your background.

Fred Duball: I am the practice principal for data center solutions in the U.S. Public Sector Workload and Cloud Solutions Practice, where I have strategic focus on IT transformation trends and provide oversight and contract negotiation in support of our client's business workload delivery needs. I acquired more than 25 years of government and commercial enterprise experience in IT and IT consulting before joining HP in 2009. Previously, I served as the Executive Director and Deputy CIO for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I led the efforts to privatize the complex state government infrastructure in a shared services initiative.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: HP's fact sheet titled Secure Your Mission-Critical Data states that "Ensuring secure, continuous IT infrastructure operations is imperative. We engineered our Mid-Atlantic Data Center to meet your exacting compute, storage and access needs." Please give us an overview of HP's Mid-Atlantic Data Center.

Fred Duball: Many of our clients know that HP has a strong legacy of IT infrastructure support; we have more than 80 data centers worldwide supporting more than 1,300 customers. But here's what makes the Mid-Atlantic Data Center (MDC) different - we have enhanced our security and compliance posture to accommodate and support the critical needs of the U.S. Federal Government, as well as commercial companies requiring stronger measures. The HP Mid-Atlantic Data Center has been designed to provide customers with high levels of security, reliability, compliance and cost effectiveness. In fact, the U.S. government has designated this facility as being a part of our nation's critical infrastructure, guaranteeing priority restoral of services in the event of a natural or manmade disaster.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Can we drill down a bit further into the specific facilities characteristics, security and services HP delivers here?

Fred Duball: A rock-solid data center means that concurrent systems are in place in the event one part of the data center fails. For instance, this facility was designed with redundant systems to create a Tier III facility as prescribed by the Uptime Institute, an advisory organization standardizing the concept of data center tiers. Next, a set of independent, HP-owned substations power the data center and connect to individual power circuits. Each substation provides service with both primary and diverse power pathways.

For energy efficiency, a robust closed loop, chilled water cooling system supports HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) modules and preconfigured data centers with self-contained systems. Our fiber circuits never cross, which means that if one circuit goes down, another one will activate. There is also an independent power substation designed to Department of Energy guidelines specifically for this data center.

From a physical security perspective, the HP MDC provides 24x7 guard post and roving patrols, and has U.S. Department of Transportation-approved guardrails with 10-foot, three-strand barbed wire perimeter fencing, in addition to post-and-cable barrier systems. The data center requires the positive identification of entrants and vehicle inspections, with surveillance camera systems, infrared perimeter monitoring, and intrusion detection systems in selected POD modules.

But from a public sector perspective, the MDC supports the extra regulatory and compliance needs of governments, because it has been designed and configured to comply with stringent government requirements and standards to include FISMA/NIST. Our remote location provides disaster recovery separation from client locations. In addition to traditional co-location services, this facility is ready to go for our HP Helion Managed Private Cloud for Public Sector (U.S.) offering, a flexible private cloud model that gives our customers a dedicated, enterprise-grade cloud model incorporating public sector requirements such as FISMA-moderate, FedRAMP- accredited, and ITAR-compatible. In fact, we serve a number of commercial customers who are specifically seeking this extra level of security.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: With an established track record over many decades and a brand recognition that is second to none, what is your perspective, Fred, regarding the unique value proposition that HP brings to the table?

Fred Duball: HP has provided global enterprise-level support across all of our offerings to some of government's largest and most complex environments, transforming their business model from traditional IT data centers to secure, flexible and scalable virtualized services. HP has more than 50 years of IT services experience, with the depth of enterprise expertise to scale workload and cloud solutions globally. We deliver services through more than 80 data centers, representing 1.87 million square feet of usable raised floor space in 27 countries. We work closely with our customers to understand their mission and strategic priorities. Once they understand that HP can uniquely provide a full range of services for their data center needs, including comprehensive approaches, we can take it a step further to advise, assess, strategize, transform and manage infrastructure and applications portfolios. By taking this approach, we can further assist customers to determine the best business and technical choices for facilities, workload and infrastructure - including where to start, and how to execute the transformation journey.

HP has the experience and resources to transition, transform, optimize, manage and migrate all or part of a client infrastructure, data center facilities infrastructure and network, and application workloads, having engaged in thousands of modernization projects over the past 50 years. HP has been named:

• "Leader" in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Infrastructure Utility Services in North America and Europe (2011-2014)
• "Strong Performer" in the Forrester Wave report on Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) (Jan. 2014)
• "Leader" in the IDC MarketScape: U.S. Government Private Cloud IaaS 2014 Vendor Assessment

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there any particular "wins" or success stories you would like to talk about?

Fred Duball: We have multiple wins to provide both infrastructure and applications solutions to most federal agencies and across many state and local government entities.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Why is the timing of this MDC relevant today for the federal market?

Fred Duball: There is a drive to consolidate all data centers within the federal government to save money and resources. According to the U.S. Government General Services Administration (GSA), the federal government has more than 2,000 data centers that require large investments in infrastructure, data storage and services. The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) asks agencies to consolidate at least 800 data centers by 2015. We can assist our federal customers in this initiative. NASCIO reports that consolidation and optimization is a top priority for state and local customers. So when you look at the market as a whole - there is a lot of interest and pent up demand that can be met from a facility such as MDC.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Any final thoughts you'd like to offer on why HP is the clear choice to partner with on transforming business systems?

Fred Duball: Transforming business systems through modernization initiatives has become imperative as the maintenance and security of "mature" IT infrastructures has increased - consuming a disproportionate share of resources - including additional capital expense costs. The MDC data center solution provides an on-premises infrastructure with cloud economics, which means customers can flex up... or flex down based on their actual monthly consumption. The fact that we offer a next-generation HP data center with multiple levels of physical security, and can deliver flexible hosting services and cloud capability built specifically for U.S. public sector clients, gives customers an alternate choice for their data services - and the consolidation reduction in operations cost, development cost and overall portfolio size.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you, again, for joining us today, Fred. Are there any other subjects you would like to discuss? Or, can you tell me where I can get more information about MDC and HP solutions?

Fred Duball: Sure. Customers can find out more about the Mid-Atlantic Data Center offering and HP solutions at www.hp.com/gov/transformation, or by emailing us directly at [email protected].

This interview originally appeared in SecuritySolutionsWatch.com. Republished with permission.