Finance Committee Page 2
August 3, 2016
host it internally and in order to do that what we are going to do is buy the servers and the hardware here and
then install the ERP version 10 here and then migrate the application and the database to the site here. We
essentially only have four to six months to do this before the contract ends. It takes four to six months just to
do the upgrade. It’s a very tight timeframe. We have reviewed our contract with legal and we do have some
wiggle room where we can go month to month if we have to but I’d rather not. It’s all hands on deck from my
teams’ perspective. This request is three parts; one is to upgrade the ERP application from a version 9 to a
version 10 and that’s the $163,800 and the other is to procure hardware and software for the new servers to
replace in our server room and the third part is to have the company that is doing the upgrade do remote
managed services of the application. So rather than hosting externally and having someone manage it for us it
will be hosted here and they will remotely manage the application and that will be $90,000 per year. The good
part about that is it saves us $120,000 a year starting in year two.
Alderman Siegel
| appreciate what Director Codagnone is doing and it’s nice to be able to save the money but in reading the
contract I’m telling you that $210 an hour; | just feel like we have a gun to our head and we have no other
options and they know that and we are getting charged...I’ve never seen anything like that for software work. Is
there any way that we can get to the point where we are not a prisoner to that kind of charge?
Director Codagnone
When we actually went out for the upgrade we got three different quotes and they were all pretty much around
the same price as far as the same hourly rate. | also looked at other communities that are doing the same
thing and | looked at their quotes and they are right in line with what we got provided. INFOR charges that
same amount too; it is a high amount but it seems to be the going rate across the industry.
Alderman O’Brien
This is a substantial investment and | can appreciate the concerns of Alderman Siegel. Will this be a friendlier
product for our people who use the Lawson system as far as payroll?
Director Codaqnone
It's the same system; it’s an upgrade to a newer version of the same system. It has a better user interface and
some improvements in the applications for payroll and the human capital management component and the
financials. It’s the system that runs the internals of the city.
Vice Chairman Cookson
By bringing it in-house | want to ask if we have the necessary skillset in order to that to maintain it year over
year?
Director Codagnone
We have the necessary skillset for the hardware and the software platform. One of the things that we are
doing as part of this upgrade; the current system that was implemented years ago that is now at the ATOS
Data Center, is on an AIX platform, a UNIX platform with an Oracle database. Those skillsets we don’t have
in-house. With this version most people are migrating to more of a Microsoft platform. My department is
mostly a Microsoft shop so we have the database skills for Microsoft Sequel Server. We have the Microsoft
and the VM skills in house so we can’t maintain that going forward.
