Sutton has signed a groundbreaking contract to provide a resilient and more flexible infrastructure for all of the council's IT services. These new arrangements will see all of the council's computer servers and backup equipment housed at Cardiff, South Wales and London Docklands.
It will lead eventually to vastly improved customer services by enabling council officers to respond more quickly to customer needs. For instance, officers will have mobile access to documents as well as the council's intranet and internet connection.
The new contract negotiated with Steria will provide all new server systems with associated storage and backup facilities. Steria will also provide the background technical support to keep the council's systems running 24x7. The new infrastructure will rely heavily on thin client and virtual server technology to improve the cost effectiveness of the equipment and simplify the support processes.
Duplicate facilities at the back-up site (London Docklands) to minimise any downtime due to equipment failure. The flexibility of these arrangements will enable any of the council's 2,500 authorised users to gain access to those systems from any computer within the council at remote sites including staff homes. .
It will take seven months to bring the new equipment and services into full operation from 1 October 2007. A five-year contract for the new services has been agreed and will run until 30 September 2012.
Contract value (including equipment purchase) is £6.5 million over five years, which returns a saving of over £1 million on current expenditure levels over those five years.
All server equipment will be displaced from Sutton's offices; all service delivery will come from Cardiff with London Docklands being used as a backup and development site.
Colin Hall, lead councillor for information technology, who led the negotiations for the contract, says: "The potential this brings to what we can offer our customers and the flexibility it will give our staff is very exciting. Furthermore and importantly it gives the council improved business continuity to minimise the effects of any equipment failure."
