Infrastructure cleanup saves almost $1 million,
safeguards much more than that

Call it a 5S exercise for the data center. Spring cleaning for our servers.

Starting last fall, ETS/IT undertook a concerted effort to clean up, streamline and consolidate the department’s software and hardware environment, removing old equipment and outdated programs in favor of newer, more secure assets.

Technical clutter within the IT infrastructure was eliminated, and the team also replaced equipment that had reached or was near the end of its service life. Part of the process also included identifying old computers at the district level and getting rid of operating systems and software that served no ITD business function, such as shooting games, and redundant programs.

“We had about 3,100 programs and were able to identify 457 of those that we could eliminate,” said Allyson Christensen, District 3’s Operations & Support Senior Technician. In addition, they were able to pinpoint and discontinue unused computers still loaded with programs ITD was paying a subscription for, but was getting nothing back on the investment.

Over about eight months, they not only made a significant asset more secure against cyber threats and attacks, but also saved about $984,000 — the remaining value of the old equipment when surplused and sold to buyers.

“We were also able to fortify our security profile at the same time,” said Service Integration Manager Juan Oleaga. ITD contains some sensitive personal information and as stewards of this information we are always looking for ways to make it more secure," says Pete Palacios, ITD’s Infrastructure Manager. These fixes helped safeguard those assets.

 

Published 06-14-19