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Burleson staff recommends ditching enterprise CAD in favor of OSSI cloud to save costs, speed rollout
Summary
City staff told the council the preferred path for the public‑safety computer‑aided dispatch (CAD) system is to cancel the Central Square enterprise implementation and adopt OSSI cloud, using a $225,000 credit to offset transition costs and avoid roughly $1,000,000 in local implementation expenses.
City technology staff recommended the council cancel a planned Central Square enterprise deployment and move the city’s public‑safety CAD to Central Square’s OSSI cloud offering, saying the change would reduce implementation risk and recurring operational burdens.
James Gromish, the city’s chief technology officer, told councilors that Central Square reversed previous plans after a leadership change and has committed to supporting OSSI for at least five years. “OSSI cloud really presents the strongest combination of stability, scalability, and support for our public safety needs,” Gromish said, noting the vendor also packages the product for cloud hosting and has invested in feature development.
Staff outlined three paths: continue with CAD Enterprise (locally hosted), operate OSSI locally, or take OSSI in the cloud. The locally hosted enterprise deployment would have required a much larger hardware footprint (staff said enterprise needed more than 40 servers versus six today) and an estimated $1,000,000 implementation cost plus higher licensing. By contrast, Gromish said, the OSSI cloud option would avoid the big up‑front implementation cost, preserve a familiar OSSI user interface for staff, allow earlier CAD‑to‑CAD connections with neighboring agencies and provide 24/7 security operations and managed disaster recovery.
Staff also said the city can apply a $225,000 credit from an earlier payment toward an OSSI cloud transition and still realize additional future savings (Gloria Platt later estimated multi‑year savings on infrastructure and licensing). Gromish and other staff said contract language under negotiation would lock in vendor support commitments for at least five years to address council concerns about vendor continuity.
Councilmembers voiced broad support for the direction at the end of the presentation; one councilmember said the presentation provided “good due diligence” on alternatives. Staff said, if council concurs, they will cancel the enterprise contract and bring the OSSI cloud contract forward for formal approval in June, with an anticipated implementation completion in October under the current schedule.
Next steps: staff seeks council direction to cancel the enterprise contract, finalize OSSI cloud contract terms and return with the contract for approval.
