February 24, 2009 By Hilton Collins
In summer 1998, Sacramento County, Calif., and Phoenix, Ariz., entered the world of public-sector enterprise resource planning (ERP) with their eyes wide open. Each needed to replace disparate legacy systems in various departments with an all-in-one enterprise system that integrated individual business processes and their data. Ten years later, the two governments who led the way for local government ERP provide insight on how they did it and what they've gained. Both purchased solutions from ERP software giant SAP, and they're two of the company's oldest local government customers.
"These are really the first two SAP public-sector customers in the U.S. Sacramento County and the city of Phoenix, in my opinion, they're really on the leading edge of the rise of platform," said Rod Massey, vice president of SAP's Global Public Sector.
Both jurisdictions' deployments are still going strong.
"We had a lot of legacy systems, mainframe systems that did various components of our business. We had a purchasing system that was vended, a financial system that was vended and an HR system that was vended. And they were from three different vendors," said Michael Connelly, an IT manager in Sacramento County's Office of Communications and Information Technology (OCIT). Connelly wasn't there for the original implementation, but he currently manages personnel who perform system upkeep. "These were older legacy systems, and so we thought, rather than just spending a lot of money trying to bring these into compliance, why don't we put that money to use instead and bring in a newer system and maybe something that integrates all of these pieces?"
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Until recently, there was no alternative to the familiar desktop computer, and its expensive upgrades and maintenance requirements. For cash-strapped local governments, the desktop computer is quickly becoming an unsustainable option for future progress. Now, a technology known as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offers an alternative. It can be significantly more affordable than buying individual computers for every employee, and it provides similar capability. This paper shows how VDI is the future of the desktop and is a game-changer for local governments.
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