To: Board of Supervisors
From: Marc Shorr, Information Technology Director
Report Title: Purchase Order with ePlus Technology, Inc. for SolarWinds Software and Licensing
☒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 ePlus Technology, Inc. and enter into an End User License Agreement with SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC., in an amount not to exceed $15,200 for the renewal of SolarWinds software services for the period of March 15, 2024, through March 15, 2025.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The cost of this product is included in the department’s FY 23-24 budget (100% User Departments).
BACKGROUND:
In 2023, the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) purchased the following SolarWinds software licensing and services to provide the WAN (Wide Area Network) team with greater visibility into the County’s wide area network:
Network Performance Monitor:
• Provides proactive end-to-end observability
• Allows performance insights across infrastructure, network, databases and applications for rapid resolution, anomaly detection and reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR)
Network Traffic Analyzer:
• Provides real-time network utilization monitoring tool, NetFlow analyzer and bandwidth monitoring software for bandwidth monitoring, application traffic alerting, network traffic analysis, VMware vSphere distributed switch support, and performance analysis dashboard and advanced application recognition
Network Configuration Monitor:
• Consolidates and automates all network configurations in one place
• Reduces the time required to manage critical changes and repetitive tasks across complex, multi-vendor networks
• Assists in resolving operational issues faster by easily identifying, troubleshooting, and fixing problems
• Reduces downtime by helping ensure that the network is compliant and secure
• Promotes best practices, consistency, by seeing the most critical details
These services have increased the WAN team’s depth of knowledge and provided them with the tools for more efficient troubleshooting, quicker issue resolution, and more thorough overall network maintenance.
ePlus Technology, Inc., is a third-party reseller for SolarWinds. The SolarWinds’ EULA (End User License Agreement), which governs the service agreement, contains Intellectual Property Indemnity and a Limitation of SolarWinds liability to the amount of licensing fees which have been paid by the County to SolarWinds in the twelve (12) months preceding the date upon which any cause of action arose for the applicable software.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
If the SolarWinds software is not renewed through ePlus Technology, Inc., the Department of Information Technology’s WAN team will have limited visibility into the County’s network which will significantly increase the timeframes and accuracy for new network configurations, issue resolution, and network maintenance.