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HomeMy WebLinkAbout6. MANAGERS REPORT 11/21/06 INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM Village of Mount Prospect Mount Prospect, Illinois TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: MICHAEL E. JANONIS, VILLAGE MANAGER DIRECTOR OF FINANCE NOVEMBER 14, 2006 CONTRACT FOR VEHICLE LICENSE MAILING PURPOSE: To obtain approval for a 3-year contract for the printing and mailing of vehicle license applications. BACKGROUND:. ~' The Village currently outsources the printing and mailing of its vehicle license applications. Based on the volume gV' applications and labor required to process the forms it is more cost effective to outsource this process rather tmrn handle the task in-house. Direct Response Resource has been proving this service for the Village since outsourcing of the entire vehicle licensing process began in 1999. Direct Response operated under two separate 3-year contracts through 2005. In 2006, the Village extended the agreement with Direct Response for one year as there had been discussions during the 2006 budget deliberations of discontinuing the vehicle licensing requirement. Since it appears that the Village will be continuing with the vehicle licensing program for the near future, a request for proposal of services was conducted for a new 3-year agreement. DISCUSSION: In September 2006, the Finance Department sent out request for proposals (RFP) to seven firms identified as being able to provide this service. The Village received three quotes in response to the request. The three service providers were IMARC, Direct Response and Third Millennium. The 3-year not-to-exceed cost of providing this service is as follows: IMARC Third Millennium Direct Response $29,121 $33,317 $37,034 IMARC was removed from consideration as they do not currently provide the vehicle application service for any municipality although they did such work for the Village of Oak Park for two years. Attached is a memo from Deputy Finance Director, Carol Widmer detailing the RFP process along with a recommendation to award the 3- year contract for the printing and mailing of vehicle license applications. RECOMMENDATION: Based on the information provided, it is recommended that we accept the three-year quote from the lowest qualified bidder, Third Millennium, for a not-ta-exceed amount of $33,317. ~~C/, <<- DAVID O. ERB DIRECTOR OF FINANCE 1:\Vehicle License\2007-2009 Outsource Cover Letter.doc INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM Village of Mount Prospect Mount Prospect, Illinois TO: FINANCE DIRECTOR DAVID ERB FROM: DEPUTY FINANCE DIRECTOR DATE: OCTOBER 23, 2006 SUBJECT: CONTRACT FOR VEHICLE MAILING The Village's contract with Director Response Resources for the printing and mailing of vehicle application forms expires as of December 31, 2006. In preparation for the 2007 mailing, seven requests for proposals were mailed at the end of September 2006. We received three responses to those letters. Two of the responses were from vendors with whom we have had a long-term relationship. One response was from Direct Response Resource, the vendor who has provided the printing and mailing of vehicle license applications for the Village for at least seven years. The other response was from Third Mil/ennium Associates, the vendor who has been printing and mailing the Village's utility bills since the year 2000. The third response was from IMARC (Integrated Marketing connection), a company in Arlington Heights. All three vendors provided the required information as to the cost of the forms, envelopes, and shipping for both the initial mailing in February and the fol/ow-up mailing in late summer. Only IMARC included an increase over the life of the contract at 4% per year. Both Direct Response and Third Mil/ennium said there would be no increase over the three year term. The total cost over the life of the three-year contract was as follows: IMARC Third Millennium Direct Response Resource $29,121.05 $33,316.80 $37,033.80 IMARC does not currently provide vehicle application printing and mailing services for any municipality although they did such work for two years for the Village of Oak Park. They are currently printing and mailing water bills for two small municipalities and have at the most two years of experience in providing those services. I did check aI/ three references and learned that they require quite a bit of monitoring and fol/ow-up to ensure work is completed on an accurate and timely basis. Due to lack of relative experience and limited number of current accounts, IMARC was not considered further to provide this service for the ViI/age. Finance Director David Erb Page 2 October 23, 2006 Both Third Millennium and Direct Response Resource have a long list of municipal clients and vast experience in the printing and mailing of vehicle applications. They have both provided excellent service to the Village over the years and require little monitoring on the part of staff to ensure their projects are completed to the Village's standards. A current list of clients for Third Millennium includes the Villages of Carol Stream, Addison and Niles as well as the City of Waukegan. It is my recommendation that we accept the lowest bid from a qualified vendor and award the contract to Third Millennium and Associates at an amount not to exceed $33,317 for the three-year period. There is $15,175 budgeted in account 0011706-540225 for these services for the first year of the three-year contract. ~t: W~ Carol L. Widmer INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM Village of Mount Prospect Mount Prospect, Illinois TO: ASSISTANT VILLAGE MANAGER DAVE STRAHL .~~ \\12.\ ". FROM: IT DIRECTOR DATE: NOVEMBER 8, 2006 SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR APPROVAL TO PURCHASE DATA STORAGE ARRA A centralized backup system was included in the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to improve data backup and restoration procedures. Phase 1 of the project (2006 CIP) will provide disk-to- disk backup capabilities for multiple servers at Village Hall. Tapes will be used as secondary backup media for offsite safe-keeping. Phase 2 of the project (2007 CIP) will provide a duplicate disk-to-disk backup system at Public Works that will replicate with the Village Hall system, eliminating the need for most of the tape backups. After investigating various solutions, staff is requesting approval to purchase an Equallogic PS50E storage array for Phase 1 of the project. Another request will be submitted before proceeding to Phase 2. Discussion Information Technology staff currently maintains twelve different backup tape devices which are directly attached to individual servers. Additionally, some of those tape drives are used to backup other servers that don't have individual tape drives. Backup management is cumbersome and time-consuming, and restoration time is slow. Backing up to disk instead of tape will minimize both backup and restoration time. Also it will eliminate the need to travel to another building to retrieve a tape that is needed to restore a file. Staff compared specialized backup appliances to general-purpose storage array solutions. (A storage array is a device that houses a collection of drives which are controlled by the software within the device.) The advantages of storage arrays outweigh those of backup appliances. The backup appliances can provide better performance if configured to emulate tape technology, since data is written sequentially in large blocks. However, the storage array offers versatility that extends beyond disaster recovery by centralizing data storage. In addition to storing backups, the array can be used as primary storage location for mission critical applications. The storage allocated to a server from the storage unit is seen by the server as a local drive. Storage volume sizes can be better managed because they can be initially "right- sized" and then expanded on the fly, eliminating situations where the space on some servers is underutilized while others are running out of space. The storage array has built-in redundancy for disk drives (RAID), power supplies, and fans. Request for Approval for to Purchase Data Storage Array November 8, 2006 Page 2 Staff has selected Equallogic's PS50E storage array because of its data-management and ease of use. The PS50E uses iSCSI technology, which means it users IP (Internet Protocol) to carry SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) commands to link data storage devices over a network. iSCSI technology provides high throughput at a much lower cost than other technologies. The PS50E is upgradeable to handle future needs. For backup functionality Equallogic provides the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of the data. The snapshots are ready to use and available for instantaneous restore. Multiple snapshots provide multiple restore points for individual files or complete systems. Veritas Backup Exec, the Village's current backup software, will be used to backup the snapshots to tape. Backups can be run during the day if desired because backup traffic is physically separated from regular network traffic using separate gigabit network cards and cables, forming a storage area network (SAN). In Phase 1 the PS50E will be used to store snapshots for servers in the Village Hall Server Room. An existing computer will be re-purposed as a backup server and existing tape drive devices will be moved to the backup server. Backups of the snapshots will be created on tape and sent offsite to Public Works. In Phase 2 a second PS50E will be installed Public Works to store snapshots of data there. The two storage units will then replicate, eliminating the need to carry tapes from building to building. Tape backups will be created as needed for archiving. In the future, consideration will be given to configuring future mission-critical servers with data drive space allocated from the PS50E instead of the local hard drive. In this scenario, data replication between the storage units will provide major benefits for disaster recovery. The implementation a SAN also opens future opportunities for server virtualization and consolidation. Although these technologies are not part of this request, they are noteworthy and should be available as a future option. Hardware Quotes Three different vendors have provided quotes for the hardware needed for the project as shown in Table 1 below. Acclaim Corporation is the preferred vendor because of price and because of their extensive knowledge in storage technology. Table 1: Comparison of Hardware Quotes Not included Not included $24,648 Equallogic PS50E Storage Array - 1.75 TB raw capacity with (7) 250 GB drives, single controller ex and able to dual controller, 72 hour batte backu Annual Maintenance Shi pin Total $19,920 $1,700 $148 $21,768 $24.648 $26,225 $1,795 $0 $28,420 I:\VB Request Memos\2006 Storage. DOC Request for Approval for to Purchase Data Storage Array November 8, 2006 Page 3 Recom mendation I request approval to purchase an EqualJogic PS50E storage array from Acclaim Corporation at a price not to exceed $21,742. Funds are available for this purchase. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. ~ ~ Middleton IT Director I:IVB Request Memos\2006 Storage.DOC