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Home My WebLink AboutFIN-09-054 - T09-025 - Desktop ComputersREPORT REPORT T0: Mayor Carl Zehr & Members of Council DATE OF MEETING: May 19, 2009 SUBMITTED BY: Larry Gordon, Chief Purchasing Officer PREPARED BY: Michelle Palmer, Buyer (2216} WARD(S) INVOLVED: Not Applicable DATE OF REPORT: May 11, 2009 REPORT NO.: FIN 09-054 SUBJECT: T09-025 -DESKTOP COMPUTERS RECOMMENDATION: That tender T09-025, Desktop Computers, be awarded to Amsdell Inc., Richmond Hill, Ontario at their corrected tendered price of $128,339.75, including P.S.T. & G.S.T., plus optional upgrades of $8,503.25, including P.S.T & G.S.T., and further that Council authorize a contingency purchase of up to forty (40) additional computers, including options, at current fair market price during the term of the contract. BACKGROUND: Desktop Renewal Strategy Desktop computers are upgraded on a five-year renewal cycle. We currently have approximately 750 computers used as a daily business tool for City of Kitchener employees. This year we plan to renew 175 computers during the 2009 PC rollout project. This number represents 23% of the PC fleet rather than the scheduled 20% due to higher demands on the PCs that our enterprise applications such as SAP and Cityworks are placing on our current PCs. This will also help prepare our PC fleet for upcoming operating system upgrades in the coming years. Ina 2009 survey of other municipalities, only 10% of the municipalities (including Kitchener) had a five year renewal cycle. 57% upgraded their PCs on a four year cycle and 30% upgraded their PCs on a three year cycle. This survey included 30 respondent municipalities, of which the vast majority were from Ontario. The City of Kitchener has been able to make a five year renewal cycle work by carefully specifying system components that will last the required lifetime. We recognize that in the current economic situation, we need to be looking for possible reductions in costs wherever possible through deferred purchases or outright avoidance of costs. However, there are considerable impacts that are likely outcomes should we deviate from the five year renewal cycle. Examples of these are listed below. B.i.iii) - 1 Customer Service Impacts: Many of the PCs in use at the City are used for front line service delivery either over the phone or in person. Keeping these computer systems operating at an acceptable level is critical for providing expedient customer service and ensuring that staff can handle the requests quickly preventing long lines and wait times. Staff Efficiency Impacts: Any time a City staff member is waiting for the PC to respond, it impacts their work efficiency. While this may be not be a major impact for those performing low intensity tasks such as word processing, many of the applications in use at the City such as Amanda, SAP, Cityworks, AutoCAD, CIS and GIS applications are very demanding of the PC hardware and there are significant gains in staff efficiency when tasks can be completed quicker. It is difficult to quantify these impacts as they would vary widely in each division as well as for each specific staff position. IT Support Impacts: The failure of an older PC causes considerable impact both to the City staff member using it and the Client Services staff team that has to resolve the problem. With PCs spread across over 50 sites throughout the City, there is a significant time investment to replace a failed PC and the down time for the staff member often impacts their ability to deliver service to their customers. It can take as much as a full work day for IT staff to replace a failed PC and because it is not planned or scheduled, there are often follow-up visits required to resolve issues. This type of PC failure requires reactive action to resolve which then increases our workload making it more difficult to maintain customer service levels and ensuring that City staff are able to use technology effectively. If we were to outright defer the purchase of these PCs to another year, we would simply be delaying the work and would then likely need to add staff resources in future years to handle the increased number of PCs to be upgraded. It is our position that a six year replacement schedule would not be practical and would have a negative impact both to City staff and Client Services staff. Desktop Contingency Plan The intent of the contingency amount is to ensure that we have a standard platform of PCs for a specific period of time should the need arise to purchase more PCs due to projects, new hires or unanticipated upgrade requirements. This contingency helps to reduce support costs (staff familiarity with hardware, dealing with one vendor for repairs, spare parts inventories, etc.}. The contingency PCs may be funded from various departmental or project budgets or from the Computer Reserve Fund. Optional Hardware Upgrades We have included the purchase of 175 Microsoft Optical Mice at a cost of $18. each. We have also included the purchase of 175 Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboards at $25. each. Optional hardware upgrades amount to $8,503.25, including P.S.T. & G.S.T., and have been incorporated into the financial information. B.i.iii) - 2 REPORT: Tenders were advertised publicly in The Record, on the City of Kitchener website and the Internet through the Ontario Public Buyers Electronic Tendering Information System. Sixteen (16) potential bidders picked up tender documents, and by the closing date of Thursday April 30t", 2009, six (6) tenders had been received. The following tenders were received: C:nrrPntPr~ Rirl MDG Computers Canada Inc. Ederick Associates Inc. Amsdell Inc. DP Technologies Inc. Nova Networks, Inc. Compugen Inc. Oakville, ON Mississauga, ON Richmond, ON Lone Tree, CO Ottawa, 0 N Waterloo, ON $130,317.25 $130,416.13 $130, 809.35 $147, 724.50 $154, 640.50 $168, 500.80 $128, 339.75 $166, 949.03 The tenders were reviewed by D. Murray, Manager of Client Services, who concurs with the above recommendation. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: Funding will be provided from 6022006 - 700035 Financial Report is attached. The balance of the Computer Reserve Fund will be used to fund the upgrade and replacement of many other components that make up the computing infrastructure at the City. In 2009, this will include purchases of monitors to replace many of the aging and failing CRT monitors currently in use. The fund will also be used to purchase network devices such as switcheslrouters and file/applicationldatabase servers as required to keep the City's information systems operating reliably and securely. The base price of a desktop CPU has increased by approximately eleven percent (11 %) from the previous tender. ACKNOWLEDGED BY: Dan Chapman, General Manager of Financial Services B.i.iii) - 3 Purchasing Tender -Desktop Computers Funded from Cost Centre 6022006 -Computer Reserve Fund Funding Sources Current Balance 6022006, as at May 5, 2009 652,828.24 Additional Revenue Projected 765,489.00 Total Revenue Projected 1,418,317.24 Projected Expenditures Tender Request (T09-025) 122,661.00 Existing Encumbrances 47,622.31 Projected Expenses (Unencumbered) 802,432.19 Total Expenditures Projected 972,715.50 Projected Surplus 445,601.74 INote: All amounts above are net of GST rebates. *Any surplus in this accountwill be used to fund future expenses related to computers. C:\Documents and Settings\micheleflLocal Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK2043\Financial Information for 2009-05-13 Recommendation.xls May 5, 2009 B.i.iii) - 4