Adam Prudhomme
Editor
An observant member of Greater Napanee’s IT department may have saved the town some major headaches in the new year-though it will mean spending money they hadn’t budgeted.
During the Nov. 12 council meeting, town treasurer Paul Dowber informed council the town’s current operating system would no longer be supported after Dec. 31 and needed direction on how to replace it. Council voted in favour of staff’s recommendation to upgrade the servers through a single source purchase from HP Enterprise with a five-year support option.
That option comes with a capital outlay cost of $79,132, with an operating cost of $12,711 per year, which represents a $7,000 decrease in the operating budget.
The town was forced to upgrade the servers-which electronically store information on items such as historical property taxes, utility billing, permits and applications, planning, enforcement and financial analysis-about a year and a half earlier than scheduled.
“Unfortunately we’ve fallen between the cracks of a corporate buy,” Dowber told council of the need to upgrade. “Which means in order for us to maintain security and in order for us to maintain that integrity, especially where we talk about large pieces of data like the tax information and utilities information….it’s recommended to move forward with the early upgrade to HP Enterprise SimpliVity platform.”
The town’s current hardware operates on SimpliVity branded Dell hardware, which was purchased through tender in 2015, scheduled to run through 2021. When the technology was bought out by HP Enterprise, the current servers would no longer be serviced.
“It was the diligence of staff that actually found this,” said Dowber. “The support is running out at the end of December.”
HP Enterprise made no mention of the fact they wouldn’t support the servers in 2020. Had town staff not discovered it on their own, they likely wouldn’t have known until they needed support.
In supporting the motion to upgrade, deputy mayor Max Kaiser also encouraged staff to seek legal recourse against HP Enterprise for not honouring the current contract that was signed with the previous company before the buyout.
Mayor Marg Isbester, who had just finished a seminar on municipal emergency training earlier in the week, noted it was important to have the servers in place before their service ceased.
“One of the largest emergencies that is coming up with municipalities all across Ontario are cyber attacks, ransomware and people losing months and years of information” said Isbester. “What we could lose would cost us more than the system and server itself end up being.”
-Councillor Bob Norrie made a motion that the town send a letter to Lennox and Addington County to give them a definitive answer as to whether or not they can get an advance green added to the lights at the corner of Bridge and Centre. Noting that he continues to get phone calls on the matter from concerned residents, Norrie said he’d like to have an answer by March 1.
-Council voted to hold a special meeting on Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. to discuss various items of clarification regarding the 2020 taxation policy. The location of the meeting is yet to be determined, though the most likely location was the Strathcona Paper Centre to accommodate any members of the public who wish to attend.