Aurora considers contract to manage city’s computer servers

Aurora is considering about a $1.2 million, three-year contract to manage the city’s computer servers.

The contract with Arizona-based Insight Public Sector would mean the company would manage the city’s servers instead of the city’s Information Technology Division.

Jeff Anderson, Aurora’s IT deputy director, said the new service would increase efficiency, reduce risk and eliminate capital outlays for server equipment.

“It puts multiple servers under one roof,” Anderson said. “We’re seeing large price increases (for server hardware), and we’re trying to get ahead of it.”

Anderson said currently, the servers require large capital outlays to maintain the hardware. The city has two server locations at the Aurora Police Department and at Fire Station 8. The servers include solutions by several vendors, including Microsoft, VMWare, Dell, Cisco and NetApp.

Coordinating updates and required purchases among those vendors is inefficient and ensures significant capital outlays, Anderson said.

The Insight proposal is an on-premises, consumption-based model that would be fully managed by Insight, he said.

City IT staff would be responsible for maintaining the applications that run within this server environment, he said, but not for coordination between all hardware and software vendors.

He said the solution would take care of peak times, but be based only on what the city uses.

The contract is a lot of money, but would save money over continuing what the city is doing, Anderson said.

He said if the city continued doing what it is doing, it would cost about $1.4 million over the next three years, compared to the $1.2 million with Insight. He said if the city bought the hardware Insight will use as part of the contract, it would cost the city about $1.6 million. In addition, Insight would maintain the hardware, instead of the city having to do it.

“We wanted to get ahead of the maintenance,” Anderson said.

Lake County and the state of Iowa use the Insight managed system, officials said.

Alderman put the contract on unfinished business for next week’s regular City Council meeting.

slord@tribpub.com