Title
Information Technologies Department recommending the Board:
1) Receive a presentation from the Director of Information Technologies articulating the cost and business analysis related to Google and Microsoft products used countywide;
2) Based on findings herein, provide approval to the IT Department to start planning activities to begin to migrate from Google to Microsoft, full migration must be completed by February 2022; and
3) Direct staff to complete the competitive bid process to choose a vendor and return to the Board with a contract for Microsoft 365 and migration costs.
FUNDING: General Fund with partial offset from the A-87 cost plan.
Body
DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
El Dorado County utilizes many Microsoft and Google products. Microsoft products include databases, operating systems, SharePoint, Active Directory for Identity Management services, cloud services and productivity desktop applications, such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
In 2007, El Dorado County migrated from Lotus to Google-mail, procuring the entire G-suite of tools leveraging the productivity tools such as Sheets, Google Drive, Google Doc and Google Presentations. Productivity tools provide employees the functionality needed to conduct county business and the ability to interact with our community. These products require annual user licenses, which include maintenance and updates to the environment to protect the organization against continuously changing cyber security threats.
El Dorado County Information Technologies (IT) Department is responsible for maintaining the licensing of these software products and support on behalf of all county departments.
In 2018, the pricing model for Microsoft changed, whereas it became more cost effective to purchase the suite of Microsoft’s productivity tools rather than purchasing the desktop applications separately. Both Google and Microsoft offer similar tools, however the maturity and the security of the Microsoft products are far ...
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