By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
The City of Great Bend’s server and backup solution has become outdated. The city looks to replace their equipment due to technological and software upgrades every five to seven years. Great Bend Network Administrator James Cell said the server warranty has expired so any parts or support is an accrued expense.
The Great Bend City Council approved the low bid of $39,744 from SHI for a server replacement.
"The servers are all going to be either Lenovo, HP or Dell," said Cell. "The base server cost is going to be around $20,000. The additional costs will come from the backup side of it. We would host that ourselves here. We control it and there is no monthly costs with that."
The next lowest bid for the project came from Nex-Tech for $56,000. Cox Communications submitted a bid for $256,000. Cell said IT department still has more than $58,000 left in their operating budget for this year to pay for the serve replacement, and over $76,000 in their technology reserves.