The City of Yorkton is moving ahead with what was a non-budgeted for purchase of a new computer server.
鈥淎s the City of Yorkton鈥檚 computing demands increase so does the need to update the computer servers and to eventually replace the old equipment,鈥� Shannon Bell, Director of Finance, told the regular meeting of Yorkton Council Monday. 鈥溾�he last time we purchased a new server was in 2010 and the cost of the server was under $10,000.鈥�
Prices have however risen in the interim.
鈥淭he City鈥檚 use of technology has increased since then and the cost of the server is now closer to $20,000. As this was not a budgeted capital item we are requesting Council鈥檚 approval to purchase the $20,000 server in the 2016 year. Each year $20,000 is budgeted to be transferred to a reserve from the capital fund to go towards the purchase of hardware and software. As at December 31, 2015 the computer reserve has a balance of just over $138,849,鈥� said Bell.
Bell said options were looked at before deciding on the need for the new server.
鈥淚t is possible to buy multiple smaller servers instead, but the increased software licensing costs would make that strategy much more expensive than the purchase of a larger server. Moving to the cloud has been considered and is implemented whenever the City can show savings to do so. In this case however, the connectivity costs alone would exceed the cost of the new server several times over, without even looking at the cost of the cloud services. With all this considered, to continue moving forward with the City鈥檚 IT Strategic Plan would be to acquire and maintain a smaller number of large servers over several years,鈥� she said.
While not in the current budget, Bell said the equipment is required now.
鈥淲e believe that we cannot wait until 2017 to purchase this server as it we would be unable to continue moving forward with key aspects of the strategic plan objectives for 2016. At the time of the 2016 capital budget we were unaware of the substantial upgrades to our financial software that have been recently implemented. Also many software requirements change over time with each upgrade with the specifics of those requirements not being known until close to the release date. Therefore we are requesting approval to purchase a new server immediately and will be submitting another proposal for consideration in the 2017 capital budget,鈥� she explained.
Council was unanimous is approving a new server at a maximum cost of $20,000 with funding to come from the City鈥檚 computer reserve account.
