Water Resources Discipline ITAC Activities

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MS EA possible changes.........

I have been working with DOI and MS on the EA information. Unfortunately, DOI has not yet started dealing with this issue, so at this time I don't have much for you. The current MS EA expires on September 30, 2005. DOI will likely renew this agreement, which will amount in a 5.5M bill for USGS spread over the next 4 years. The current agreement was roughly 7.2M for the USGS. The renewal is a percentage of the total agreement, which is call Assurance. So we are renewing Assurance. The EA is covered in the GIO line item.

I can present this in power point format next week......

This renewal will give USGS the following, for the next 3 years:

Enterprise Desktop - Upgrades to XP (LongHorn due 2007, maybe), Upgrade to Office (Office 12 due in 2006) Upgrade to the CAL needed for Longhorn and SR 2.
CALs -Upgrade to current CAL
Windows Server - Upgrade to Longhorn and SR2
SMS -Upgrade
SQL -Upgrade
MOM -Upgrade

Main problems with renewal:

Are there benefits in renewing?
We currently do not own enough licenses for the Server product. We own 650 and have installed 750. This amounts to a needed 'True up' of 100x500=50,000. That is not already recovered or in the GIO line item.
We cannot accurately tell where the software is or if it is installed.
We cannot accurately charge back the costs to an office over installing any product.

Solution -Send information to offices suggesting they cut back on installing many devices per user, or per software service. (ie - 3 dell servers that in MD 4 years ago (each requiring licensing), ran DHCP, WINS, DC, and internal applications such as Big Brother or backup software, are now all run on one box. MD (with AD) ran 3 DC's (two in MD (80people)) and one in DE (30 people), now just run 2 DCs and use the network as failover. Basically understanding the licensing model, MD went from 12 servers to 6 in the last few years, leveraging the power of the hardware and windows 2003 server. (ie - MD had 2 file servers for users and gis, now they run 1 2003 server with 2 processors and split the load on the processor, and all user data is on 1 box. This model will decrease our servers and licensing fees. As opposed to buying more servers.....

We are partnering with EROS to develop a portal that offices can use to obtain the software, and track where it is. We will then need to yearly ask offices to update this information.
I am looking for options on the charge back problem?

Additionally, the MS EA includes Email CALs, however, it does not include a CAL for every user. At present, if all USGS users migrate to Exchange, we will need 2000x150.00=300,000. Also, the current DOI CAL model will need to be changed from per device to per user. Device CALS are needed for each device accessing email, while user CALS are needed for each user (no matter of how many devices) accessing a resource.

Solution - buy more CALs. Can't get around this one, unfortunately.

Let me know if this does not answer the questions, or we can talk next week..............

Thanks, Paul

Paul E. Exter
Lead IT Specialist
Office of Information Technology
U.S. Geological Survey
(410) 238 - 4234 Work
(410) 375 - 0120 Cell