2003 AGN JUN 03 I17 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item #17 CITY OF COLTON AGENDA REPORT For City Council Meeting of June 3, 2003 TO: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council FROM: Dilu De Alwis, Finance Director SUBJECT: Authorize Release of Request for Proposal/Qualifications Document and Solicit Responses from Qualified Information systems Vendors DATE: May 27, 2003 BACKGROUND On November 14, 2001, Hewlett Packard announced that they would no longer support their HP 3000 effective December 2006 and gave their customers five years to transition to another platform. This announcement has business critical impacts on Colton's ability to maintain its in- house Customer Information System (CIS) in its current status. Since Azusa Light & Water and the City of Colton share hardware and software, a joint investigative process was developed and implemented. Given the multi-year lead time needed to implement CIS solutions, staff members from both utilities have been working together to develop a set of CIS functional specifications, contacting prospective information systems vendors and writing a Request for Proposal/Qualifications. As noted above, the document was jointly developed by staff from both cities. Azusa Light & Water has already taken this plan to their City Council and received approval to release the RFP/Q. Copies of the RFP/0 are available for review by Board Members upon request. Staff expects to have the next update for Council by September 2003. DISCUSSION/ANALYSIS Because the performance of our hardware and CIS billing system directly affects the revenue of the City, it is imperative that we thoroughly review all of our options to determine the best possible solution for Colton. To date, we have shared the costs of the Azusa programming staff as well as the cost of the hardware, but this may not be the best possible solution going forward. However, there is a significant cost to any change of this magnitude, and one of the costs might be a decreased functionality from an off-the-shelf solution to our CIS needs. With adequate time to research the various options available to us, staff feels confident that they can find the solution that offers the best balance of price and performance to meet our needs.