[Updated] City Taps IBM To Take Servers To The Cloud

[Update below] Because CityTime worked out so well, our mayor has decided to try his hand at another massive attempt to streamline city infrastructure. IBM has just landed a $100 million, five-year NYC Citywide IT Infrastructure Services (CITIServ) contract. Meant to centralize and update data centers at 50 city agencies as well "provide better security and improve efficiency," the contract should, in layman's terms, take the city's servers "to the cloud." Just don't let this cloud rain where it shouldn't—OK Bloomberg?

Update: Whoops—we misunderstood the wording on this one. The city has reached out to us to clarify that IBM deal is actually a $7.7 million contract for one year which it expects will save $100 million over five years.

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By Garth Johnston in News on January 31, 2011 5:55 PM

Comments [rss]

Dubai Directory

Good to hear! The best thing is the IBM company recently announced a Federal Community Cloud and Municipal Cloud environments that enable government IT departments access to the latest technology software and services that reduce duplication and streamline efficiencies.

mclainbarbosa

Opened to support Linux. Manuals (once an expensive and secret stuff) and some products are now available for free, and are oriented articles online that are actually quite good.

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jibbly

I see that spambots are getting smarter. Our copy/paste overlords are upon us!

Unkle_Bob

Seriously. IBM may be expensive up front, but they have among the best engineers out there. And they're not going to play games. The job will get done, and done right.

Noreaster76

That doesn't mean the good engineers will be put on this project. I will only believe that IBM is a good choice for the job once I hear or see evidence that they use lean/agile methodologies (which big companies are often not innovative enough to use). If they use waterfall, we can kiss that $100M goodbye, and watch as the money for the project gets bigger and bigger. $600M, anyone?

Sinchy

The summary says "IBM has just landed a $100 million, five-year NYC Citywide IT Infrastructure Services (CITIServ) contract" but the linked article says "The CITIServ project... is expected to save the city $100 million over five years," so we don't really know how much this project will cost.

GalBklyn

Glad to hear good things about IBM.

However, the overall specifics of the project are a bit vague. Standard Consultant Speak if you ask me. Consequently, I can't decide, if, this project is appropriate during the same budget year our happy mayor is threatening cuts to essential services.

We need to know more about the project and once that is clear, who in the administration is responsible for keeping it on time and under budget.

Ph

Actually, IBM is the one company I would actually trust to hit it out of the park. They really are still that good...and always have been.

angry_pickle

I agree that IBM is cool now. But the IBM in the 80s and 90s was a monopoly that shoved proprietary hardware and (inferior) software down the throats of big corporations. But since the late 1990s, they've opened up even supporting Linux. Manuals (once expensive and secretive things) for some of their products are now available for free and they have programming articles online that are actually quite good.

unretrofiedforu

That's nice. Too bad they sucked out a majority percentage of US jobs in the process.

They opened up because they found they couldn't dominate w/ the old post-war way on the global stage. They're still no where near the glory they once were while bringing devastation to upstate NY. Fuck IBM.

TeddyNYC

Yeah, competition is great. It forces companies to step up and offer a better product to customers. Speaking of competition, I can't wait for Verizon's FiOS to get to my block. They're only a block away!