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County alerted to AS/400 end-of-life; IT advises migration or competitive procurement to replace core enterprise systems
Summary
IT staff warned the county the AS/400 platform that runs the county's core SunGard modules (finance, payroll, permitting, CAD, sheriff systems) will be end-of-life and recommended a migration path or competitive procurement; an estimated project could be in the multi‑million-dollar range and staff proposed including the project in the budget.
County IT staff alerted the commission March 7 that the county's AS/400 (IBM) hardware and the SunGard modules that rely on it are approaching vendor end-of-life, and that SunGard is shifting focus to Windows-based platforms. The county's enterprise suite supports key functions — financial modules, payroll, human resources, permitting/land-use modules, the 911 CAD and sheriff incident reporting systems — and IT staff said the aging platform and declining third-party expertise create operational risk.
IT staff said IBM had extended support into 2019 but that the county should plan a migration or competitive replacement. The full upgrade or replacement could be a multi-year, complex project; IT staff estimated parts of an upgrade could take more than a year for a single major module (for example, the finance module). Staff recommended a full-and-open procurement process to learn whether migration with SunGard or replacement by another vendor would provide better long-term value.
Budget staff recommended capturing an enterprise-software upgrade project in CIP planning and noted transfer-tax revenue as a possible funding source rather than bond financing; commissioners directed IT to include the project in planning materials and to pursue a procurement strategy to obtain firm proposals and cost estimates.
