Explanation
BACKGROUND:
This legislation authorizes the Director of the Department of Technology (DoT) to continue an agreement with OARnet/OSU, a non-profit organization, for VMWare software licensing, maintenance and support services. The original agreement (EL011737) was authorized by ordinance 1716-2010, passed December 13, 2010. The agreement was most recently renewed and modified by authority of ordinance 0513-2014, passed March 31, 2014, through purchase order EL015745. This ordinance will continue the agreement with OARNet to incorporate several one year terms of VMWare software maintenance and support renewals (Named licenses, quantities, and specific term periods applicable to each license are identified in Attachment A*). The total cost associated with this ordinance is $109,146.32.
Through the State of Ohio Virtualization Program, OARnet offers significant discounts on VMWare that are not available in the market place, so it is in the City’s best interests to procure VMWare through OARnet, instead of through another procurement process. The pricing offered to the City reflects the agreed upon public sector discounts available to all participants in the State of Ohio Virtualization Program.
VMWare software is needed in order to operate virtual servers. Server virtualization has been adopted by the Department of Technology to reduce the costs of data systems, reduce power consumption and cooling requirements, and provide further capabilities for recovery and availability of information systems. The initial phase of the virtualization project was completed in 2009. The project is ongoing, and will allow the Department of Technology to further reduce costs of software licensing and hardware purchases, and realize power consumption savings.
This ordinance also requests to waive the competitive bidding provisions in accordance with section 329 of the Columbus City Code. OARnet pricing discounts for VMWare are greater than can be achieved t...
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