Title
a. Approve and authorize the Contracts Purchasing Officer or the Contracts Purchasing Supervisor to execute a State and Local Agency Server and Cloud Enrollment Agreement with Insight Direct USA, Inc. (Insight), a Microsoft licensing reseller, for the purchase of Microsoft government services, data backup software subscriptions and associated maintenance/support, for the period of January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2020 in the maximum amount of $96,859.80; and
b. Accept non-standard contract provisions as recommended by the Director of the Information Technology Department; and
c. Authorize the Contracts/Purchasing Officer to issue purchase orders on an as-needed basis pursuant to this Agreement over the period of January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2020; and
d. Approve and authorize the Contracts/Purchasing Officer to execute a renewal of the Agreement for one (1) additional 36-month term, subject to County Counsel approval, on the same or substantially similar contract terms and to issue purchase orders on an as-needed basis pursuant to Agreement renewal.
Report
RECOMMENDATION:
It is recommended that the Board of Supervisors:
a. Approve and authorize the Contracts Purchasing Officer or the Contracts Purchasing Supervisor to execute a State and Local Agency Server and Cloud Enrollment Agreement with Insight Direct USA, Inc. (Insight), a Microsoft licensing reseller, for the purchase of Microsoft government services, data backup software subscriptions and associated maintenance/support, for the period of January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2020 in the maximum amount of $96,859.80; and
b. Accept non-standard contract provisions as recommended by the Director of the Information Technology Department; and
c. Authorize the Contracts/Purchasing Officer to issue purchase orders on an as-needed basis pursuant to this Agreement over the period of January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2020; and
d. Approve and authorize the Contracts/Purchasing Officer to execute a renewal of the Agreement for one (1) additional 36-month term, subject to County Counsel approval, on the same or substantially similar contract terms and to issue purchase orders on an as-needed basis pursuant to Agreement renewal.
SUMMARY/DISCUSSION:
Since 1985, the Information Technology Department (ITD) has been backing up County data locally to tape, and storing a second copy of the data tapes offsite at a secure facility operated by Iron Mountain. With the County’s move to server-based applications and away from mainframe-based systems, the amount of data stored, the disk space required, and number of tapes required to store County data has grown exponentially. Although tape technology has improved over time, there are still occasional tape media and drive failures. In addition, the current data backup process is extremely time consuming, requiring significant investment of ITD staff resources.
ITD seeks to enter into the agreement with Insight to purchase data backup software subscriptions and associated maintenance/support to implement a new backup solution which will enable the County to move away from using tape as a backup media; instead, ITD would use these products to store all County data on highly available disk storage. This will greatly reduce the time it takes to backup data, as well as the time it takes to restore an accidently deleted or overwritten file. To ensure that protection of the County’s data is complete, this Agreement affords ITD the ability to restore data from the Cloud, i.e., offsite Microsoft servers, should the County’s Data center become unusable.
The proposed agreement with Insight to purchase Microsoft data backup software and services supports ITD’s project 1930-104, Virtual Server Farm Upgrade; the purpose of this upgrade is to store a copy of all backed up data in the Microsoft Government Cloud to facilitate recovery of data services should a disaster render the County’s existing ITD infrastructure useless. In addition, the proposed agreement includes the licensing and support of multi-factor authentication for log in into County systems; multi-factor authentication supports the ability of County staff to access Monterey County systems remotely and securely.
The proposed Agreement is non-standard for the County, but is based upon a standard agreement that Microsoft uses throughout the state and nation for governmental bodies. The proposed Agreement also allows the County to enroll with Insight for access to current and future Microsoft Azure suite products; it provides the County with flexibility to determine the level of services, maintenance/support, and licensing of other Microsoft tools that are necessary to accomplish County business. Based upon the County’s past experience with these well-established companies, and the fact that the proposed Agreement allows the County to make purchases on an “as-needed” basis, the Director of ITD is recommending approval of this Agreement.
The proposed Agreement provides for the possibility of one renewal for one additional 36 calendar month term. The Board is asked to authorize that renewal in order to insure continuity in the County’s data backup processes and to ensure that County data is recoverable in the event of disaster or unforeseen occurrences.
OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT:
County Counsel cannot approve due to the following non-standard provisions: non-standard payment terms providing for 3 payments per year; non-standard termination for cause and early termination provisions; absence of insurance and lack of indemnity protections for the County. Risk Management does not approve non-standard insurance and indemnity provisions. The Contracts/Purchasing Officer has approved use of these two vendors in order to maintain continuity of County I.T. data services and network access.
FINANCING:
Funding for the increased agreement amount is included in the Information Technology Department Fiscal Year 2017-18 under Appropriation Unit INF002, Budget Unit 8439. All future year costs will be included in the submitted budget for each of the respective fiscal years.
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS STRATEGIC INITIATIVES:
The execution of the proposed Insight Agreement furthers the efficient administration of County business and improves County technological infrastructure by enabling the County to efficiently back up County data, to recover County data in the event of accidental override, deletion or disaster, and to continue to provide secure mobile workstations that support County Departments.
__Economic Development
X Administration
X Health & Human Services
X Infrastructure
X Public Safety
Prepared by: Sandra Shaffer, Management Analyst III, 759-6957
Approved by:
_______________________________________Date: ________
Eric A. Chatham, Director of Information Technology, 759-6920
Attachments: Insight Azure Support Agreement
Attachments are on file with the Clerk of the Board