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City moves forward on municipal fiber and managed network services; city to light fiber and build monitoring
Summary
City staff described amendments to contracts for managed services and for design/build of the municipal fiber network; plans include ongoing maintenance, lighting the fiber for production and standing up a network operations center with potential recurring costs.
Technology staff briefed council on Feb. 6 about two related items: an amendment to an existing managed services contract for routine support of network devices and an agreement to design and build the city's municipal fiber network and 'light' it for production use.
Dwayne Kendall, assistant director of technology solutions, said the managed services amendment covers routine maintenance and monitoring of network switches, wireless access points and other field equipment deployed at city sites. He said a managed service provider is more cost-effective than hiring 24/7 in-house staff to provide the same coverage.
"This contract is for a managed service provider, with much lower cost than if we were to, to have staff 24/7, 365 to provide these kind of services," Kendall said.
City staff also described contract work to deploy the municipal fiber network (the Metropolitan Area Network) intended to reduce reliance on commercial providers. Carrie Goode, director of technical solutions, said the vendor will "light" the fiber to put it into production and that the city expects to create a network operations center (NOC) for 24/7 monitoring. She said Duke University will be a partner on repairing fiber cuts where networks share conduit, and staff warned there will be recurring costs to operate and monitor a city-owned fiber backbone.
Council members asked whether further funding requests should be expected; staff said additional recurring costs are likely for the NOC and ongoing monitoring. Staff also said design-and-build procurement came from a government procurement contract and that the city will issue separate RFQs for design consultants and construction managers for particular projects.
Ending: Staff said the city will proceed with amendments to ensure continued operations of existing devices and move forward with the fiber lighting and operation plan, and that council will see future procurement items as the network deployment advances.
