Danbury Board approves five‑year VMware licensing agreement to avoid server shutdowns

The Danbury City Board of Awards voted July 9 to approve a five‑year VMware licensing agreement with GovConnection to secure annual license renewals at $87,904.80 per year and avoid an imminent disruption to city servers. Frank Gentile, director of technology services, told the board the license must be renewed or the city’s server farms could “shut down and go into maintenance mode.”

Gentile said the proposed five‑year arrangement would lock in pricing and give the city time to transition some services to software‑as‑a‑service alternatives. He told the board that Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has driven industry‑wide price increases; the current renewal represented roughly a $20,000 increase from previous years and leaving the city on a year‑to‑year contract could add further increases of 20–30% annually.

“Locking the price for five years would protect the city’s investment and buy us time to find alternatives,” Gentile said, adding that the city plans to pursue strategies to reduce its virtualization footprint over the next several years.

Board members asked about the current price and contingencies if the contract were not executed; staff said failure to sign new license codes before expiration would force the server farms into maintenance mode and could necessitate an expensive migration or other interim workarounds. The motion to award the license under GovConnection via the cooperative contract, contingent on execution of the agreement, carried unanimously.

The vote authorizes staff to finalize the license agreement; technology services will proceed to execute the contract and continue exploring long‑term virtualization and software‑as‑a‑service strategies for the city’s legacy and public‑safety systems.