City officials approved two agreements to make way for the eventual replacement of servers for the city’s IT department later this year.
The Board of Public Works and Safety on Tuesday approved change order forms submitted by Texas-based computer services company DartPoints.
Regina McIntyre, city controller, was joined by IT’s Brett Kimberlin to explain how the city is increasing its server rack storage, used to hold and organize IT equipment.
“We’re going to expand the number of racks we have with DartPoints in order to replace our servers this year, which is in our budget to do so,” McIntyre said. “And it allows us to change them out without actually taking them down. It makes for a smoother transition.”
The 2025 IT capital budget includes a $450,000 line-item for the new servers, including equipment and server software, per McIntyre.
The city already had an agreement with DartPoints to pay for existing storage at $808 per month. The first change order increased that by $59 dollars with the work involving the elimination of one of city IT’s nine fiber cross connects, according to a copy.
The second change order form is to add an adjacent cabinent for servers in IT’s secure facility, which costs a one-time fee of $1,198.
Kimerlin said the current racks they use are full and echoed McIntyre in saying how much easier this will make future upgrades. DartPoints has a Columbus location in case any additional service is needed.
The city is poised to invest into their IT infrastructure this year after they experienced a data breach last summer.
