 Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) represents change. As it looks today, HRM didn't even exist six years ago until the County of Halifax and the cities of Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Sackville were amalgamated into one. Advocates of amalgamation at the municipal level often look to cost containment and the elimination of duplication to be a major benefit of such an exercise. HRM is no exception.
Delivering on that promise can, however, be easier to accomplish in theory than in practice. In particular, information technology (IT) spending on integration, operations and training can actually increase, if not handled properly. The successful merger of five separate IT staff and environments is a daunting challenge, but one that was handled by Chuck Keith, HRM's Director of IT with one simple vision; standardize on the best platform and focus your resources and planning to exploit that platform.
In 1998, HRM standardized on a Sun EnterpriseTM 3000 server and in 2001
renewed its commitment to the SunTM platform. HRM upgraded to Sun FireTM 4800
and 6800 servers to run the municipality's new SAP platform for Human Resource
and Financials. This new environment was a welcomed change from the patchwork
of legacy systems that first faced Keith and his team immediately after
amalgamation. Initially, Keith managed a variety of platforms including Sun, Data General, Digital, HP, IBM and NCR.
"Total cost of ownership is a major consideration for our needs," says Keith. "IT spending for the municipality is like anything else, it's a cost centre that gets the attention of budget officials on an annual basis. Being stable in cost while responding to growing needs is hard to deliver on, but in part because of standardizing on Sun we have been successful in delivering on that expectation."
Keith is committed to the utilization of a single platform because of some of
the inherent benefits this approach holds. Reduction of training costs,
improved planning and the ability to marry internal resources with a long term
supplier equip the municipality with the ability to handle such unique
challenges as disaster recovery in house. According to Keith, to be successful, you also need to make sure your platform is carefully chosen. HRM chose Sun as its long-term platform for several key reasons.
"One key criteria is longevity. If you're going to choose a long-term partner you need to ensure that they will be with you over the distance," said Keith. "Longevity certainly narrowed the field of choice for us and it was quickly recognized that UNIX® on Sun was an industry leading combination."
Another criteria for HRM was local support and presence for a platform. Making the right decision in this area would help ensure that proper resources would be
available if needed by HRM. Once again Sun Microsystems proved to be a strong choice. Sun's Independent Marketing Organization, Integrated Open Systems offers the
local assistance required by HRM and other Sun client's in the area including the National Research Council and Atlantic Blue Cross.
Finally, the platform needed to be architectured to allow for growth and
expansion and use in future phases of infrastructure deployment. Recognizing
the challenges of the municipal budgeting process, Keith and his team were determined to eliminate requests for new capital expenditures on an ongoing basis through the acquisition of hardware on a lease.
"We needed to be able to flatline our costs on the servers and the desktops over the course of many years," said Keith.
While holding the line on costs through a leasing vehicle for the Sun Fire 4800 and
6800 servers and Sun StorEdgeTM T3 Disk Arrays, HRM has increased the volume of demands placed on the hardware. The flexible and scalable Sun platform continues to meet the demands and growth experienced by HRM .
"Scalability is a big thing for us and with Sun and its commitment to binary compatibility, we've been able to move through this product line with no problems whatsoever," said Keith. "The SolarisTM Operating Environment also gives us the kind of flexibility that makes consolidation a great choice and allows you to do many things on one box. That's something you just can't get with NT where the limitations are numerous."
In the future, HRM plans to use the Sun platform as it explores options for delivering web services such as a land registry system, on-line payment of parking fines accessible through its expanding municipal portal. The HRM approach will be to build a portal in stages and bring solutions on line as the business case and demand emerges.
With the perspective of 26 years in IT, Chuck Keith has learned to be very discerning about what one can and cannot expect from technology companies. Sun Microsystems has not disappointed him. The Sun team has recognized his needs, those of his team and taken the time to recommend what was right for HRM, not just the newest product from Sun. HRM continues to treated as an important client and remains a happy Sun customer.
As a result, Keith has aligned the long-term interests of HRM's IT plans closely with Sun. The decision also supports another area where Keith sees stability as an important part of long term success - staff.
"We have been able to attract and keep some of the best people in IT at the Halifax Regional Municipality and I believe that part of the reason for that lies in our approach to standardize our platforms," said Keith. "We only had one departure from a staff of 40 in the past year and that has happened because we focus our relationship around not just salary and quality of living but also on training that keeps our people well equipped with the most up to date skills."
Because Sun is the hardware platform of choice at HRM, the return of investment on training is maximized and creates a valuable resource of Sun experts in-house at HRM.
"Our strategy of standardizing on Sun has allowed us to combine top notch people with top notch equipment," said Keith. "That means we can roll out some of the best services for our organization with reliability and success, a combination that is critical to our own long term value to the municipality."
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Enterprise, Sun Fire, Solaris and Sun StorEdge are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
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