FedEx announced that it would close all its data centers while retiring its mainframes within the next two years. The CIO of FedEx, Rob Carter, said the company is gunning for a zero mainframe and zero data center environment based in the cloud. According to Carter, the development will save the company $400m annually. He said: “We’ve been working across this decade to streamline and simplify our technology and systems.” Carter continued by saying: “We’ve shifted to cloud...we’ve been eliminating monolithic applications one after the other after the other...we’re moving to a zero data center, zero mainframe environment that’s more flexible, secure, and cost-effective.”
The company is known to be a major customer of Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. FedEx launched its first on-premise data center in Colorado Springs in 2008. The facility was then expanded to 166,000 square feet in 2011. It also bought over 70 acres of land in Nashville, Tennessee, for a reported data center development. In addition, FedEx announced a 10-year data center deal with Switch Inc. in 2019. The agreement is for Switch to serve as FedEx’s western US data center.
