CDT's Rogers Details State's Ongoing 'Data Evolution'

The state’s No. 2 technology chief, Richard Rogers, says the state’s IT apparatus is in the throes of a “data center evolution,” with a few key trends leading the way:

“The mainframe hardware — that iron — is not obsolete,” Rogers declared in a breakout session Monday at the California Digital Government Summit. “The software that may be running on that mainframe — that may have been running for 20, 30, 40 years — is obsolete.” But, he said, there’s still a role in the public and private sectors for mainframes. 

Rogers also offered a prediction: Within five years, what’s now a “state data center” will become a “digital services center,” with a fuller menu of offerings including storage, computing and security. And it will have a list of customers beyond just state departments and agencies; more and more, local governments and even educational entities are becoming subscribers and customers of the state’s broadening menu of services.  

Rogers cited the explosive increase in demand for state IT services, a theme he touched on at the California Department of Technology’s Vendor Forum earlier this summer.

And that’s not all. Rogers got more granular in describing the state’s IT evolution. Those changes and additions include:

• The consolidation of the data center
• An ability to prorate services
• The offering of public and private cloud
• An upgrade in state-level cybersecurity
• Enhanced networking capabilities
• More emphasis on IT resiliency: “Knowing that we had to do something about our network resiliency … because it was very expensive for our customers to be able to provide high availability.”
• Moving from the public cloud to “your private data center.”
• Storage as a service

The gains that the state is making, he said, also extend to state and local government entities.

“We can buy on behalf of state and local, and that’s economies of scale,” he noted. “We’ve been able to get some very attractive rates when we start brokering our services for state and local, and even for education.”

Rogers, who had been the state’s chief technology officer, is now the acting chief deputy director and deputy state CIO — roles he’s been filling since the departure of Chris Cruz, who held those titles until moving to the CIO position in San Joaquin County earlier this year. Cruz moderated Monday’s session with Rogers, which also included Jon Mark Sano of CDW.