City Council
Report
City Council Meeting: September 27, 2022
Agenda Item: 5.G
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: Joseph Cevetello, Chief Information Officer, Information Services Department, Infrastructure and Cloud Services
Subject: Approval of a Purchase Order for the use Amazon Web Services (AWS) Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council authorize the City to issue a purchase order with DLT Solutions, a Tech Data Company, for Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the Information Services Department. This recommended award is made as an exception to the competitive bidding process pursuant to Section 2.24.250(c) and is for a total amount not to exceed $1,237,500 (including a 10% contingency of $112,500), over a five-year period, with future year funding contingent on Council budget approval.
Summary
The Information Services Department (ISD) uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services for hosting the City’s business systems in the cloud. As part of its “Cloud First Strategy,” ISD has transitioned a portion of the City’s servers from an on-premises datacenter to AWS. Over the past two years, as the transition has progressed, the use of cloud-hosted servers and services has increased. ISD anticipates this growth to continue over the next five years. Staff seeks approval to enter into a new multi-year purchase agreement with authorized reseller of AWS cloud services, DLT Solutions (DLT).
Discussion
ISD has initiated a “Cloud First Strategy” for its Information Technology infrastructure to achieve greater agility, lower cost, and increased resiliency. As part of this initiative, the City selected AWS as its cloud service provider. AWS offers a tremendous flexibility 2 of 3
and potential cost savings for hosting data center applications and infrastructure ondemand. In a traditional on-premises data center environment, the City invests in data center equipment, software licensing, facility power & cooling, annual hardware/software maintenance, and staff costs. There are also fixed capital expenditures that the City must pay upfront.
In the AWS cloud environment, the City pays monthly for only the computing resources that it consumes and reduces the City’s expenditures on information technology infrastructure. The AWS cloud environment allows for quick and simple expansion or reduction of computing services and includes integrated disaster recovery. Additionally, cloud-based computing allows the City to modernize business applications and infrastructure, enabling the adoption of newer, more modern technologies that in turn support an improved customer experience to the community through improvements to the website, 311 system and other citizen facing applications.
At this time, only 10% the City’s servers are hosted in AWS. This number is expected to grow as departments modernize their business systems and formulate plans to replace legacy applications. AWS is the largest, most reliable cloud service provider in the industry. To fully implement and establish the City’s AWS environment and to leverage economies of scale pricing for AWS cloud services, ISD must procure services through an AWS government reseller, such as DLT Solutions.
Vendor Selection
Exception to Competitive Bidding
Staff recommends DLT Solutions to furnish and deliver/provide AWS cloud services as an exception to competitive bidding per Muni Code 2.24.250 (c): competitive procedures were followed by a governmental agency, federal, state, county, city, joint powers agency, special district, or cooperative purchasing agency and the goods or services are supplied to the City at the same or better price.
In 2019, Region 4 Education Service Center (a conglomerate of 47 public and 40 charter schools covering seven-county areas in Texas) conducted a competitive process through the Omnia Partners, Public Sector Purchasing Alliance, for technology products, services, solutions, and related products.
Contract # R190902 was awarded to DLT Solutions to provide AWS cloud services, including, training, archiving, data processing, warehousing, storage, infrastructure services, and support services. Region 4 Education Service Center has partnered with OMNIA partners make this solicitation available to other public agencies nationally, including state and local governmental entities, public and private primary, secondary and higher education entities, non-profit entities, and agencies for the public benefit. The City of Santa Monica will piggyback on this contract which offers the most competitive pricing for AWS 3 of 3
services.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
Staff seeks authority to approve funding from the Information Technology Replacement and Services Fund to award a purchase order with DLT for AWS cloud services. The current proposal from DLT Solutions is for a total amount not to exceed $1,237,500 for 5 years. Future year funding will be contingent on Council budget approval. Funds for this purchase are available in the FY 2022-23 Capital Budget. Enterprise funds will reimburse the General Fund to pay for their portion of AWS hosting.
Purchase Order Request
FY 2022-23 Budget
Request Amount Future Years CIP Account # Total Contract Amount $222,500 $1,015,000 C7100030.689000 $1,237,500
Prepared By: Sarkis Metspakyan, Systems & Network Manager Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. OAKS INITIATIVE FORM_FE_v1
B. OAKS INITIATIVE FORM_FE_v2