Xerox duplicates move to cloud data centers for Texas

Say Xerox and copying comes to mind; indeed, the corporate name has entered the lexicon as the generic word for electronic document duplication.

But if the company has its way, one day soon Xerox could also mean cloud-based data centers.

Xerox has won a nine-year, $848 million contract from the state of Texas to create secure cloud-based services by modernizing and consolidating its data centers.

The upgrade will be one of the largest projects of its kind in the country, according to a March 13 Xerox announcement.

Xerox will help the Texas Department of Information Resources streamline IT operations of state agencies by refreshing technology and combining operations from 28 separate facilities into two centralized data centers.

The transformation will reduce the cost of running multiple data centers, improve security and disaster recovery capabilities, and provide and sustain more than 500 jobs in the state, the announcement said.

Xerox’s partners on the IT consolidation project include technology companies and a number of Texas firms designated as Historically Underutilized Businesses.

“The new data center services project will stabilize services for our state agency customers, improve responses to state agency needs and allow visibility into system costs so that agencies can manage their use of services for increased efficiency.” said DIR Executive Director Karen Robinson in the announcement.

Xerox Corp., of Norwalk, Conn., ranks No. 56 on Washington Technology’s 2011 Top 100 list of the largest federal government contractors.