Agenda - 11-04-1991 - Laserfiche WebLink

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2 M E M O R A N D U M To : Orange County Board of Commissioners From: Keith Brooks, Data Processing Manager Re : Mainframe Computer Status and Options Date: October 31, 1991 1. E i ment History Orange County first became involved with mainframe computing in early 1978, with the purchase and installation of a Microdata platform. Prior to that time, the County had received contracted computer support through a service agency located in Winston - Salem. In late 1979, the County added a second Microdata processor, which was funded through a federal land records grant. During the early 1980s, McDonnell Douglas Computer Systems Company (MDCSC) purchased Microdata. Throughout the 1980s, the County upgraded its platforms about every three years, working through a sequence of Microdata and MDCSC computers in "the 1400, 3200, 4000, 6000, and 9000 series. In March 1989, the Board of Commissioners approved the most recent upgrade of our existing.mainframe platforms, which at that time were two MDCSC platforms: an M6000 with thirty two users and an M9000 with one hundred and twenty eight users. The M9000 was overloaded, very slow, and at maximum number of user ports. The M6000 could have been upgraded but our expansion needs were in the Tax /Land Records area, which was on the larger system. The staff recommendation, approved by the Board, was to replace both MDCSC platforms with a larger, faster MDCSC system to meet our current expansion and thruput speed needs, and to install a small Prime platform to meet some of our long range goals, such as industry standard communications and electronic mail. The new MDCSC platform, an M9255, solved our immediate needs for user expansion and increased thruput performance. We increased our user ports to 176 and more than doubled our processor speed. On the other hand, the Prime, a P4055, has not worked out very well. The two platforms are not as r+ I