Recently, a new study by MeriTalk shows that many federal data center managers are unaware of the type of savings they could be realizing thanks to data center consolidation.

The study, underwritten by NetApp, took aim at the ability of managers to track cost savings at the data center level, and examined how this lack of information has led to an inability to quantify savings and reinvest them in further technology upgrades.

This data is especially pertinent after the recent push to consolidate government-owned data centers, led by former CIO Vivek Kundra. Kundra’s plan was to shut down over 800 data centers by 2015 and to greatly improve the efficiencies of the remaining data centers, in hopes of bringing the government in line with many private businesses that have made the move to VPS or cloud providers.

When the study was released in April, it was determined that the government could save up to $18 billion through server virtualization, and 41 percent of the data managers surveyed claimed that they had an idea of the costs they would face with data center consolidation.

Information released in the study indicated that only 31 percent of respondents who worked for federal agencies knew the average load their data centers are under, while 94 percent of those from the private sector knew what their load looked like.

Of those asked in the federal IT survey, 67 percent did not know the average kilowatts per hour each rack of their storage used, and nearly 25 percent didn’t know what their levels of data efficiency were.

Private industry often has a greater need to examine such data to provide maximum profit margins, but it appears that federal government could find savings there as well.