To: Board of Supervisors
From: Marc Shorr, Information Technology Director
Report Title: Purchase Order with General Datatech, L.P. (GDT) to renew F5 Networks hardware maintenance and support services
☒Recommendation of the County Administrator ☐ Recommendation of Board Committee
RECOMMENDATIONS:
APPROVE and AUTHORIZE the Purchasing Agent, on behalf of the Chief Information Officer, to execute a purchase order with General Datatech, L.P. (GDT), subject to GDT’s Terms of Use and F5 Networks Maintenance Agreement, in an amount not to exceed $44,000 to renew F5 Networks hardware maintenance and support services for the period of March 12, 2024, through March 11, 2025.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The cost is charged 100% to user departments.
BACKGROUND:
General Datatech (GDT) provides enterprise information technology solutions and strategic partnerships, including F5 Networks which specializes in application delivery and security solutions. The Department of Information Technology (DoIT) Wide Area Network (WAN) staff utilizes F5 Networks maintenance and support services to manage the County’s BIG-IP platform. The BIG-IP platform includes a range of products, including Traffic Management, Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), Access Management, Security and Analytics and Monitoring, that are designed to improve the availability, security and performance of applications and services delivered over the County network.
The following departments will receive F5 Networks services:
1. CCCFPD
2. CCTV
3. Tax Collector (Tax Payment)
4. EHSD
5. EHSD Northwoods
6. EHSD Web Directory
7. DOIT ADFS
8. DOIT GIS
The agreement with GDT contains a limitation of GDT’s liability to the County of the lesser of $1,000 or 100% of any amount the County has paid GDT for non-conforming goods or services.
F5 Networks maintenance agreement includes a Limitation of F5’s liability to the service fees actually paid under the agreement.
This purchase was competitively bid by three separate vendors. GDT, the incumbent vendor, was chosen as the lowest bidder at $43,467.90, and for continuity of services. Other vendor bids were Insight Public Sector for $44,014 and Rahi Systems for $47,508.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
If support is not renewed, the subscription for updating the Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Application Security Manager (ASM) will be affected. ASM protects mission-critical web infrastructure against web application attacks such as Layer 7 Denial of Service (DoS) /Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), brute force and web scraping attacks, and monitors protected web applications. If an incident or attack occurs, DOIT will not have the ability to request assistance on behalf of the user departments.