Texas Technology - Fall 2008 - (Page 19) El Paso County Courthouse Photo courtesy of El Paso County Working Together Fabiola Rubio, CIO of El Paso Community College, hopes to use the county’s data center as a long-term disaster recovery solution to support the system’s five campuses. She said she’s waiting to hear back from the county on just how the partnering arrangement between the college and the county will work. As soon as they’re ready, she’ll be there. “We were really happy to hear from them simply because the cost of building a data center is just enormous for one entity by itself,” Rubio said. “We’re looking forward to do the collaboration because, obviously, we want to leverage our resources. With the collaboration we have shared costs, and that is obviously going to help every entity. “I have high hopes that we’re going to be able to work out all the details with them, and it’s going to be an exciting venture simply because it’s state of the art,” she said. Rubio will be looking at the cost and everything the community college will get for its money, and she’s not alone. “We are committed in concept, but I haven’t seen anything concrete that says, ‘All right, here’s the space available. If you want this amount of space, we’ll need to worry about these kinds of costs,’” said Stephen Stiles, chief technology officer of the El Paso Independent School District. “With that specificity, that becomes a formal commitment on our part.” Stiles said working with the county will be much cheaper for the school district than going alone. Representatives from other interested parties are eager to see how the arrangement with the county will El Paso County has a request for quotes out to build a new 6,000square-foot, next-generation data center that will employ green technologies, and will be built inland on countyowned property across Interstate 10. 10 AVE. NIO ANTO N E SA CITY HALL ANO PAIS OLD LOCATION 500 E San Antonio Ave. El Paso, TX 79901 T. ELL S MPB S CA ST. NSAS S KA NEW AREA FLOOD ZONE N be delineated, but some ideas have already been floated. “We’ve only talked philosophically about it, and what we’re going to probably do is meter the power separately for each agency, which is an easy thing to do, so we’ll each be responsible for our own power consumption,” said Gerald Gordier, the city of El Paso’s CIO. This will reduce operating costs, allowing the county to use more cash for building maintenance, air conditioning and other necessities. He expects the city to use the data center as its primary data site once the project is completed. It’s still unclear whether the county will lease equipment to other entities or lease everything from another vendor, but Cooper hopes the relationship between all entities will be ironed out once the data center consultation is done. Cooper expects the implementation will be spread out among multiple solicitations, beginning with the design consultant. After the consultant helps the stakeholders fully express what they want, there will likely be more solicitations for vendors to help complete the design and build the structure. Cooper, Stiles, Rubio and Gordier aren’t strangers to the collaboration game. Their entities are among those that worked together on the Digital El Paso Project, which deployed a wireless Internet network to downtown El Paso. The primary sponsors were the city, county, housing authority and El Paso Independent School District, but other public and private groups played roles. The sponsors began work on the network in 2006, and today downtown El Paso has wireless network capability. In June 2008, the Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers presented the Digital El Paso group an award for best collaborative project in Texas. “That just goes to show you the importance and the spirit of collaboration, and that’s what we’re doing here in the city,” Rubio said. “And I’m telling you that it’s probably leading other cities and counties in collaboration.” N N T. LS EL PB . M ST CA AS NS KA N A MES NDE GRA RIO www.govtech.com/tt _19 http://www.govtech.com/tt
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