India, Oct. 8 -- It's been almost 10 years since the U.S. federal government set out to make its own data centers more efficient and less costly to run. Over the course of those years, the world of IT has undergone a lot of change, including a continued rise in cloud computing and more widespread implementations of artificial intelligence or AI. Those changes have hit government as much as they have commercial data centers.

Since the start of its data center project, the U.S. has consolidated and closed some data centers, sure. But it's also making the most of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and sensors to improve its remaining data centers. A new report from IDC looks at the state of U.S. data centers today and some of ...