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Sheriff's office proposes cloud migration as commissioners probe steep setup and recurring costs
Summary
Sheriff's office outlined a plan to move public-safety software to an enterprise cloud platform with a one-time setup in the low-mid six figures and recurring annual fees; commissioners debated the alternative of buying on-premise hardware and asked for vendor demos and clearer cost allocation before committing.
The Camden County sheriff's office presented a proposal to migrate its public-safety record, jail and CAD systems to an enterprise cloud platform, a change that staff said would modernize records management while shifting some hardware and backup costs to the vendor.
Sheriff's staff described two cost components discussed in the work session: an upfront one-time migration/setup figure discussed around $394,000 and an ongoing annual subscription in the neighborhood of $333,000 (presented as the countys share after contributions from partner agencies). The sheriff explained that remaining on-premises would require purchasing new hardware: a five-node Scale hyperconverged system quoted months ago at about $255,000 had risen in recent vendor quotes to roughly $451,000 because of supply-chain and chip-price pressures.
The sheriff's presentation and the county IT director framed the choice as an either/or: move to the cloud and buy a smaller three-node local system (quoted nearer $272,000) or remain on-premises and replace the full five-node configuration. Commissioners asked for demonstrations and clearer breakdowns, and county IT urged careful evaluation of recurring fees, potential municipal contributions, and vendor feature sets before committing county operating funds.
Commissioners and IT also discussed operational trade-offs: the cloud option reduces local backup and licensing overheads but carries a recurring subscription; on-premises hardware is capital-intensive and subject to volatile hardware quotes. The board asked the sheriff and IT to return vendor demos, a breakdown of the countys recurring share, and the exact services covered by the subscription before final funding decisions.
No binding decision was made; commissioners left the migration in the package for now while requesting clearer vendor proposals and updated cost splits to factor into the final budget.
