TITLE
Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute a lease-purchase agreement and related financing documents with Banc of America Public Capital Corp for the financing of personal computers, computer related equipment, and servers in an amount not to exceed $1,313,300 including interest, payable over a four-year period. (Citywide)
DISCUSSION
In 1997, the Technology Services Department (TSD) implemented a plan to replace all City-owned personal computers (PCs) after three years of use. The three-year replacement cycle was designed to refresh the technology to take advantage of innovations and to reduce the ongoing support costs associated with the maintenance of older equipment and software. Lease financing of the replacement program allows the City to maintain level annual expenditures and departments are able to spread the acquisition cost over the term of the financing, rather than budgeting large one-time capital outlay expenditures.
In an effort to reduce PC-related expenditures, the City implemented a program to extend the replacement cycle for PCs from three to four years as part of the City's Financial Strategic Plan. Leading information technology industry experts, such as Gartner, Inc., have found that the average lifespan of a personal computer is 43 months and, therefore, recommend a four-year replacement cycle to achieve the lowest total cost of ownership. The City's own experience validates the four-year replacement cycle.
By refreshing personal computers every four years, the City workforce benefits from reduced PC downtime resulting from hardware failures and from faster, more robust machines. In fact, TSD estimates that by saving just three minutes a day from a new computer, resulting from faster boot-up, log-in, and application response times, the City could save over ten hours a year per employee.
The City expects to install approximately 1,050 replacement and new computers, LCD monitors, and servers. The estimated cost to replace...
Click here for full text