eBooks/eGuides

eGUIDE 7 (855) ONE-NECK | www.OneNeck.com Like any IT transforma on, there were bumps along the way that the City and OneNeck worked through together. Since the exis ng contract was s ll in place when the new contract was signed, the OneNeck team was unable to gain access to the compu ng environment prior to the hand-off. There was no way to perform an ini al assessment. However, when the contract did expire, OneNeck was able to work with the installed systems and ini ate the migra on without any real problems. Part of the reason for the success was the ongoing communica ons between the OneNeck team and the City's IT team. From the first day the contract was signed, the City demonstrated their eagerness to forge a partnership and commi ed their me and resources to the project. To ensure success, the OneNeck project team and the City's IT group met twice each day to plan and assess progress. As the OneNeck team moved through each phase of the project, they encountered a few surprises. For example, they discovered that most of the installed enterprise systems were at the end of their lifespan. There was no alterna ve but to take the outdated systems and make sure they con nued to work; le ng the system go down was not an op on. The biggest surprise came with the implementa on of the Criminal Jus ce Informa on System (CJIS). Before work could begin on the CJIS project, the en re OneNeck Opera onal Support team, more than 100 professionals, had to be screened for security clearance, including fingerprin ng and background checks. However, OneNeck worked closely with the City to sa sfy all of the City's security and compliance requirements, even though it impacted progress on the overall transi on project with the City. The Benefits Despite these challenges, the OneNeck team was able to complete Phase 1 of the project on me and within budget. Some of the IT environments were even ahead of schedule. OneNeck was able to scale the capacity of the ReliaCloud environment quickly to accommodate 70 separate loca ons and 3,500 users with more than 250 servers and 180 terabytes. Much of the first six months of the project included migra ng data and workloads from the exis ng service provider's data center to ReliaCloud. As the rela onship evolves, the City of Minneapolis will con nue to look to OneNeck as a strategic service provider. OneNeck con nues to supplement the City's team with diverse exper se, across many technologies, bringing solu ons and resources as needed, even outside the originally contracted services. The City is already seeing on-going benefits as they are more flexible and more responsive to stakeholders needs. City administrators expect to save more than $3 million annually with OneNeck, and as new upgrades and applica ons are needed as part of organic growth, the City will con nue to benefit from OneNeck's versa lity and ability to plan and manage a dynamic IT infrastructure.

• Cover