City Administration says the support structure for email exchange is at a ‘critical juncture’ due to overgrowing their recommended storage limit.
At the Governance and Priorities Committee Meeting, City Administration laid out some of the options for council. The first option and the one City Administration is recommending is migrating to Exchange Online. The cost for doing so will be $20,181 in 2017 and an annual cost after that of $12,072.
The next option is to fix the current system, which will involve purchasing more storage space. The cost for this option is $11,174. This fix will only last until 2020 according to City Administration, and then the city will have to resort back to option number one again.
The next option is to continue looking for a fix. City Administration says this will lead increase the risk of email outages.
“Basically we need a system that is going to lead us into past 2020,” says Mayor Gerald Aalbers.
He adds, “moving to the cloud, that seems to be where there’s a great deal of information from the movement side. Security is there for that information access, so we’re talking about FOIP. It’s so important that we have the ability to get back to documents if we’re asked to and required to. It’s good housekeeping.”
Mayor Aalbers goes on to say this matter is time sensitive.
“We don’t want the email system to crash at the city. If that happens, we’re going to go back to the paper trail that I don’t think anyone wants to see.”
This item was not budgeted for, but the City says it can be accommodated in the approved 2017 IT Capital and Operating budget amounts.
No decision has been made, it will be discussed at the council meeting on Monday.