Case Study: California Natural Resources Agency achieves 42% IT capital cost reduction and 70% faster service delivery with NetApp

State of California Sets a New Standard for IT with Shared Services

The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), which includes 29 departments from small environmental offices to CalFire and the Department of Water Resources, faced siloed IT, duplicate hardware, unpredictable costs and long provisioning times—problems amplified by the 2008 budget crisis and critical mission needs like fire, flood and water management. Leadership adopted a shared‑services vision to consolidate infrastructure and deliver IT more efficiently across the agency.

CNRA implemented a private cloud built on NetApp storage and clustered Data ONTAP (8 PB total) with secure multi‑tenancy and nondisruptive operations, enabling capacity‑on‑demand and faster provisioning. Results included 300% more effective storage in a 30% smaller footprint, 42% lower IT capital expense, 35% lower operational expense, 70% faster storage provisioning, and availability improved to 99.99%, along with significant power and cooling efficiency gains.

California Natural Resources Agency

Tony Morshed

CTO