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Plymouth approves up to $87,000 for townwide IT upgrades, board cites cloud migration and security steps
Summary
The Select Board approved a purchase order not to exceed $87,000 for Connections/Souza Technologies to migrate servers to the cloud, modernize networks and add multifactor authentication and backups across town departments.
The Plymouth Select Board voted to approve a purchase order not to exceed $87,000 to a contracted IT vendor to modernize town computing systems and move servers to cloud-hosted services.
The contract covers a phased upgrade plan that includes migration of on-site servers into a cloud environment, rollout of Microsoft 365 (SharePoint Online) storage, deployment of multifactor authentication and modern authentication standards, improved Wi-Fi/access points at town facilities, replacement of end-of-life workstations, and new dispatch-center workstations.
During discussion, board members and staff emphasized cybersecurity and continuity. An IT vendor representative explained that SharePoint Online would provide versioning and geo-redundant backups and that the migration will include two-factor authentication options such as YubiKey tokens or the Microsoft Authenticator app. Staff said the vendor followed the townprocurement rules and sought three quotes for the equipment in phases 1 and 2.
"Part of that migration is going to include two-factor auth," a town IT reviewer said at the meeting, and added the vendor had proposed modern authentication standards and device inventory management.
The board amended and approved the motion to make the purchase not to exceed $87,000. A select board member moved the payment; another member seconded; the board voted in favor.
Officials said the upgrades will retire an on-site server closet with no redundancy and bring the townMicrosoft 365 environments under a single managed umbrella. Staff also noted prior annual IT costs were about $65,000 in aggregate across multiple vendors and have been reduced to roughly $29,000 under a single consultant arrangement.
