Question Period Note: Stabilization of Information Technology Infrastructure

Critical applications for delivering services to Canadians are sometimes hosted in aging legacy data centres, depend on older coding languages, and run on legacy information technology infrastructure that requires significant maintenance. For these reasons, Shared Services Canada’s is supporting the Government of Canada in assessing, prioritizing and ensuring the health and stability of these critical applications.

• In order to deliver reliable services to partner departments, Shared Services Canada has established a comprehensive Workload Migration program and Data Centre Closure initiative that is consolidating and closing data centres at an ever increasing rate.

• To date, over 200 data centres have been closed through consolidation to the Cloud, to one of four Enterprise Data Centres, or into a more reliable location until they can be moved more permanently to an Enterprise Data Centre or the Cloud.

If pressed on speed of consolidation:

• In order to fulfil its obligation to have an inventory of information technology infrastructure assets, Shared Services Canada has implemented an Asset Discovery and Inventory Management Initiative.

• This initiative is providing the department with an inventory of information technology infrastructure assets so that they can accurately rank at-risk aging data centres for closure based on business needs and potential impacts to services that are essential to Government of Canada operations.

• This initiative has also increased the speed of consolidation of data centres. For example, in fiscal year 2018-2019, Shared Services Canada closed 56 legacy data centres, and this fiscal year, Shared Services Canada is working to close another 75 legacy data centres.

Legacy Data Centres
Most legacy data centres have been in existence for many years, often with aging infrastructure. To address this risk, Shared Services Canada has established support and maintenance contracts for the major data centres and is evergreening critically at-risk infrastructure wherever possible. To aid in these efforts, the department has established a comprehensive Workload Migration program and Data Centre Closure initiative that is consolidating and closing data centres at an ever-increasing rate. Shared Services Canada has been working since 2011 to consolidate nearly 720 of its original data centres and move the associated workloads (Government of Canada applications) to the Cloud or to one of four Government of Canada Enterprise Data Centres. A total of 488 legacy data centres still require consolidation and it is the Department’s long-term goal to host as many applications in the cloud as possible.

Workload Migration
Building on the work to update the Government of Canada’s use of Windows servers, and to continue to modernize the Government of Canada information technology infrastructure by increasing service reliability, Shared Services Canada is moving applications from older data centres to modern data centre facilities or the cloud. This program is known as Workload Migration, and will ensure that critical applications are reliable and that data is secure, which in turn will reduce the risk of service disruptions to Canadians.

Planning to migrate critical applications from older hosting solutions to newer and more stable environments requires careful coordination with customer departments since these departments all have their own peak business cycles and blackout periods.

Shared Services Canada engaged industry through an Invitation to Qualify in August 2018 as the first phase of a competitive collaborative procurement process and selected five qualified vendors to bid on workload migration contracts. The qualified vendors are: IBM Canada Ltd., EMC Corporation of Canada (Dell EMC), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Canada Co., Hitachi Vantara Inc. and CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants Inc. These bidders are top industry leaders with proven experience in planning and executing migrations from aging data centres to Cloud services and modern Enterprise Data Centres. On August 30, 2018, the department published responses to the first round of questions and some amendments to the Invitation to Qualify to the Buy and Sell Canada website.

Shared Services Canada published the list of qualified vendors for workload migration services to the Buy and Sell Canada website on January 11, 2019. The qualified vendors now have the option to bid on Request for Proposals for specific workload migration services as they arise.

• Nearly 720 legacy data centres required consolidation in 2011. To date, over 200 legacy data centres have been consolidated in the cloud or in one of four enterprise data centres.