CC MEETING: November 19, 2024
DATE: October 23, 2024
TO: Erin Rinehart, City Manager
FROM: Chris Chiancone, Chief Information Officer
Chrystal Davis, Assistant City Manager
Title
Consider Authorizing The City Manager To Enter Into An Agreement With SoftwareOne, Inc., Through TIPS Purchasing Cooperative, For The Renewal Of The City’s Microsoft Enterprise Agreement In An Annual Amount Not To Exceed $1,000,000, For A Three-Year Total Amount Not To Exceed $3,000,000.
Body
BACKGROUND:
The City of Carrollton is required to maintain a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) for all City Microsoft Servers, Desktops, Applications and Cloud licensing.
The Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) is the licensing vehicle that affords the City use of all Microsoft products and performs a license count true up or down at the end of the year for additions and removals of licenses managed throughout each contracted year. This agreement alleviates the burden of ordering software licenses for each new installation or employee by allowing mass updates at the end of each fiscal year. In addition, this agreement significantly improves the deployment process and reduces the amount of paperwork required to keep track of licenses for compliance purposes.
Using the Microsoft EA program, in combination with Microsoft’s other security and cloud solutions, offers additional benefits to the City including the ability to upgrade or downgrade licenses based on specific business/testing needs, access to Microsoft’s TechNet portal for early access to software and problem resolution resources, and advanced security notifications.
If we do not enter into a new Microsoft EA, the City of Carrollton will have to purchase licenses for all the Microsoft products currently being used at retail prices, without volume discounting, substantially increasing the cost of the Microsoft products and licensing for the City.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
The funds for these items are budgeted in the following Information Technology account:
ACCTG UNIT ACCOUNT BUDGET AMOUNT
151001 61350 $1,000,000.00
A 10% contingency is built into the request to account for increased usage which may cause the annual cost to rise and due to the criticality of this service.
STAFF RECOMMENDATION/ACTION DESIRED:
Staff recommends Council authorize a contract with SoftwareOne, Inc. for the City’s Microsoft Enterprise Agreement in the amount of $1,000,000 for year one and a three-year contract total amount not to exceed $3,000,000.