TO:
Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
THROUGH:
John Jalili, Interim City Manager
FROM:
Bruce Moe, Finance Director
Leilani Flores Emnace, Information Systems Manager
SUBJECT:Title
Award of Three Year Contract to Internap Network Services for Redundant Internet Connectivity with an Estimated Annual Value of $50,300 (Finance Director Moe).
APPROVE
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_________________________________________________________
Recommended Action
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends that the City Council: a) waive formal bidding per Municipal Code Section 2.36.140 (waivers); and b) approve a three-year Internet services provider (ISP) contract for connectivity redundancy with Internap Network Services with an estimated annual value of $50,300.
Body
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
Funds totaling $38,000 are included in the fiscal year 2013-2014 Information Systems budget to add City redundant Internet service bandwidth. For budgeting purposes, $38,000 was requested as the bandwidth originally scoped was less than what is now being requested. Detailed analysis on Internet connectivity warrants equivalent bandwidth if not better. The annual cost of this additional service is $50,300 for a full year. The funds allotted in this year's budget are sufficient since the service is being installed later in the fiscal year. The full $50,300 will be budgeted in future fiscal years to provide for this service.
Please note that the attached contract indicates a monthly cost of $3,809, or $45,708 annually. This amount is before telecommunication taxes and fees, which add an additional 10%, bringing the annual total cost to $50,300.
DISCUSSION:
The Internet plays a vital role in providing services to the public. Internet services are a fundamental business tool for local government to handle everyday operations and provide faster delivery, accessibility and improved services to the citizens.
More than 300 City laptops, desktops, servers, and enterprise-wide applications require Internet access. Taking advantage of new technology implemented over the past few years, demand has increased tremendously to support the numerous City applications requiring high-speed Internet access to function. Among these applications are:
1. Electronic Mail (external inbound/outbound mail)
2. Granicus - video streaming and on demand webcasts for City Council and Planning Commission meetings
3. Vision Internet Content Management Tool - Data content for the City's website
4. GoReach - Service requests for repairs and maintenance on City facilities and infrastructure
5. ActiveNet - Parks and Recreation activity registration
6. Route Match - Dial-a-Ride scheduling
7. Municode - access to the Municipal Code
8. US Bank - Purchasing card program and banking services
9. Infosend - Online utility bill payments
10. Turbodata - parking citation issuance and processing
11. Department of Motor Vehicles - access to vehicle and driver records
12. Inmate Communications - jail phone service for inmates
Furthermore, City departments have increased the use of Internet for online training, webinars and online meetings. These forums utilize large amounts of bandwidth for video, degrading access speeds for other Internet applications.
Access to the Internet is currently provided by Internap Network Services (Internap) with a speed of 45 Mbps (megabits per second) implemented last fiscal year. Internap is a broker of Internet service, who contracts with the major telecommunication providers and can instantly re-route Internet traffic to insure connectivity at all times. Their contracts are with national and local providers (Verizon, AT&T, etc.). The national providers hand off the Internet signal to the local providers once in their territory.
In March 2013, City Internet access was down for approximately 48 hours caused by a local provider's hardware failure (it was not caused by Internap). This severely impacted City operations. To ensure Internet redundancy and optimum performance, staff proposed (and City Council approved) through the budget process, the implementation of redundant Internet service using a different local provider (but still through Internap). In the event the primary Internap circuit should fail, connectivity will switch to the secondary Internap circuit and City Internet service would continue.
Staff recommends that the City upgrade its current service with Internap as opposed to soliciting bids and potentially changing providers. Internap will setup the redundant link/additional Internet circuit to be utilized at all times. Internap's two circuits would be configured to load balance Internet traffic, thus providing improved service. Further, in the event of an outage through one circuit, the other circuit would take over and eliminate an outage.
Another important factor which justifies consolidating under one provider is the impact to email delivery. Using Internap, the City will pre-configure its Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) IP addresses which in the event of an outage will route the City's email traffic to cutover to the working circuit. If the City were to go with another provider, timely coordination would be required to setup the re-routing of inbound and outbound email; Internap streamlines this coordination, thus minimizing impact and providing a safety net for continued email operations and Internet access.
Internap has been a consistent and reliable Internet Service Provider for the City since 2005, during which time the City experienced only one outage (not caused by Internap). The vendor's service is reliable, has predictable performance and effective routing. By upgrading Internap's current service with the use of another local provider, better redundancy and load balancing of Internet connectivity is achieved. Information Systems staff will have a single point of contact for Internet service and billing, and more importantly, network performance monitoring.
While this redundant plan will reduce the possibility of downtime, it is important to note that any backup plan cannot guarantee 100% uptime.
While the recommendation is to procure the redundancy through the same supplier from which the City's primary service resides, staff performed a comparison with other providers for similar service. Estimated annual costs range from $40,000 to $50,000; Internap's cost is within this range. Given the City's past experience with Internap, staff recommends that the City Council waive formal bidding and approve upgrading service with Internap.
If approved, the upgrade will be completed in April.
Attachment:
1. Internap Contract