Northrop Grumman has an entire arm of its business devoted to Information Systems that makes about $10 billion in revenue a year. They aren't exactly a small time operation when it comes to IT.

The Richmond Times Dispatch really seems to hate the Northrop Grumman / VITA project. Actually, from my experience a lot of folks down in Richmond hate it and tend to bad mouth it endlessly.

There is a lot of bad sentiment here in VA as this consolidation/outsourcing of IT cost quite a few State jobs which obviously upset a lot of people. Of course, they forget the fact that Northrop Grumman is one of the State's biggest employers and that they were hiring people to work at the new location. I still hear of lot of anger on radio stations and in the news when I'm in that region.

Master Yoda called this back in The Empire Strikes Back: "Luminous beings are we...not this crude matter!"

Power failure are very frequent depending on where you live in the country, and it only takes a brief sag in voltage to take down your system/rack/entire data center if you are unprotected by a UPS.

A good, solid UPS is very reliable as long as you keep it maintained. The major issue is keeping the batteries good, not continually exposing them to deep discharges, etc.

There is a reason that the Microsofts, Googles and other huge users of data centers spend millions of dollars on critical infrastructure like UPSs in order to protect their investments.

The decision to roll the tech out in Washington DC may have been made since Sprint's Executive HQ is in Reston, VA. Reston is just a stones throw from DC in the Dulles Corridor, the facility is basically on the main highway between DC and Dulles International Airport; its a very short distance.