AI for Federal Agencies: Right from the Start

Cyxtera Technologies • October 04, 2022 • 2 minute read

AI/ML, Federal, Channel Partners in Data Centers

The National AI Initiative Act of 2020 was enacted in January of 2021 in order to accelerate AI research and application for our national security. This legislation directed and reinforced the importance of AI research and development across all US Departments and Agencies. One of the essential pillars of this initiative is to “advance trustworthy technologies, reflecting accuracy, explainability and interpretability, privacy, reliability, robustness, safety, and security or resilience to attack.”

Around the same time, Cyxtera was launching a new approach to managing AI/ML Compute-as-a-Service. Our goal was to collaborate with NVIDIA, the global leader in AI, to provide “government agencies, as well as their contractors and sub-contractors, greater performance, agility and rapid deployment of infrastructure to support AI workloads.”

We recognized the power of AI but also wanted to solve for many of the challenges of deploying an AI solution. Advancing models into production requires infrastructure to enable easier model tracking, versioning, monitoring, and management. At every stage in AI solution development – concept, testing, inference, and full deployment – financial and performance issues need to be addressed. While many AI innovations start on a dedicated computer, as they grow, they will need to be dependent on more powerful compute options that can be expensive to acquire and provision.

Our AI/ML Compute-as-a-Service is one way of reducing the financial- and resource-devouring aspects of early-stage development. Provisioning of AI is made easier through our as-a-service model, eliminating the need for large capital outlays and provisioning. Our clients can see significant reductions in time-to-market as our subscription model allows you to provision through a point-and-click approach. Preparing any data center for the heavy, energy-hungry AI compute systems can be a burden. At Cyxtera, our data centers are already occupied with NVIDIA DGX^TM A100 servers.

At the National Laboratories Information Technology Summit and beyond, we’ll be sharing how Cyxtera’s Federal Platform, FedRAMP® Ready at the High Impact Level, enables federal agencies to deploy secure, private infrastructure in our data centers with the speed and flexibility of cloud. Agencies can access dedicated, separate, isolated units. Servers are easily deployed through our web-based portal or API. The entire stack – from motherboard up - is under complete control by native IPMI-level access to the servers. Our AI/ML Compute-as-a-Service supports federal “Cloud Smart” policy mandates through our cloud-like deployment model.

From small, quarter cabinet requirements to full scale deployments, Cyxtera and our DGX^TM Ready Data centers are prepared to support your needs.

Progressing AI solutions is essential to our federal interests. Like anything else, building a sustainable strategy is the first step. We would welcome the opportunity to talk through your needs and see how Cyxtera can help you build your program. Our country needs to be sure your innovations are built right from the start.

Views and opinions expressed in our blog posts are those of the employees who made them and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Company. A reader should not unduly rely on any statements made therein.