Approve Contract with Computer Associates for Software Licensing and Maintenance

The attached contract consolidates four software contracts for Computer Associates (CA) software, scheduled for renewal in fiscal year 2006-2007, into one contract. This new 3-year contract reduces our annual costs and simplifies the contract terms and conditions. Our district uses five categories of CA software, which include Student Information System (SIS), Computer Network Management, Service Desk, DB2 Database Tools and Security. CA Software products required for the continued operations of the District’s primary computer systems were identified and reviewed by staff. Software products, which could be replaced with open-sourced software or which are feasible to competitively re-bid, were removed from this contract. Open-source software is software that is free of licensing cost. The attached overview includes a pie chart that shows 48% of the existing CA software was identified as “Replaced or Rebid.” The majority of the reduction in Computer Network Management is attributed to the District’s use of Altiris’s corporation software deployment solution in place of CA’s software delivery solution. In addition, the DB2 Database Tools and Internet Anti-virus / SPAM filter software products will be competitively re-bid prior to their license termination date. The SIS and Security reduction is the result of Information Services staff taking advantage of open-source software options. A reduction in the annual cost for the individual software products is realized by consolidating our software contracts, leveraging our investment in software products, and reducing licensing of selected software products. The operation of SIS is dependent on this CA contract renewal. The SIS contract expired on August 15, 2006. CA extended licensing to allow for time to negotiate and approve this contract.

Goal 6: Goal 6.a Require accuracy of student data.

The total cost of this three-year contract is $1,650,000 with annual payments of $550,000. The District FY 2006-2007 budget includes $1,002,656 for CA software renewal. The reduced annual costs results in $452,656 being available for the rebid products. We are unable to determine the actual savings until the cost from rebidding the DB2 Database Tools and Internet Anti-virus / SPAM filter are deducted. An estimated cost of $250,000 for both categories would result in a total savings of $202,656 annually, or $607,968 for the three-year term.

The CA software is evaluated annually to confirm that it provides the functionality required to meet the District goals and objectives in a cost effective manner.