Pulaski County is moving ahead with upgrades to its data backup system. The county commissioners voted Monday to buy a new Unitrends backup device. That involves an up-front cost of $25,000 for the device itself, plus $6,900 a year for support.
IT Director Matt Voltz first brought the quote to the commissioners last month, but they wanted to see what other companies would charge for similar products. This week, Voltz presented quotes from two other companies. Both of them were lower than Unitrends’.
But Voltz said one did not really fit with the county’s needs. The other was comparable to Unitrends’, but lacked some of the features. “Unitrends, they’ll give us the physical device as part of the $25,000 price tag,” Voltz explained. “That’s ours. We pay that $25,000, it’s ours for the rest of time, as long as we want to use it.”
He said that wasn’t the case with the other company. “We’d have to provide the server, and then we’d pay a licensing fee every year, dependent on how much data we back up.”
Voltz expects the county’s data storage needs to increase by one to two terabytes a year, due to the Sheriff’s Department’s use of body cams and the Prosecutor’s Office switching to digital court documents. While the Unitrends device will cost more up-front, Voltz projects it will actually be $30,000 cheaper over the next five years.
