Melrose First City in State To Offer Regionalized IT Services

Melrose already provides health department services to two other towns. Now, the city's getting into the technology business.

In an agreement that will go before the Essex Board of Selectmen on Monday night, that town would pay Melrose $6,500 a year to host its computer files, programs and servers.

Jorge Pazos, Melrose IT Director, said, "Not only is (the agreement) the first in the state, we're sure that it's the first in New England and it might be the first of its kind pretty much anywhere—where one community essentially becomes a cloud provider to another community in a regional format."

Cloud computing is one of the latest buzzwords in the technology world and describes a system where storage and most of the heavy duty computing is handled off-site, and people access files and programs through a leaner computer—so-called 'thin clients'—that may not contain the traditional hard drive. Pazos has previously spoken about using thin clients as a .

Mayor Rob Dolan said the IT agreement is like the agreement Reading and Wakefield have with Melrose ; the planned ; and the ; in that the goal is for smaller city departments to become more self-sufficient.

"Because it's (fiscally) not getting better," Dolan said."It's just not getting better right now. The quicker we realize it, the better off we'll be. This is a way to maybe have some other people pay our bills for us while we offer a service."

Pazos added that there hasn't been any increase in the IT budget to accommodate this agreement, which "is leveraging what we already have," and that additional staff isn't needed to offer the service unless it grows into a larger regional model.

À la carte computing services

The agreement includes a year-long implementation schedule that begins with Melrose storing all of Essex's computer files. Melrose will later house Essex's server infrastructure and, eventually, the city will provide virtual desktop infrastructure for the town.

In other words, Essex employees, when looking at their computer desktop, will be solely interacting with files, programs and even operating systems that are all stored on Melrose's computer servers.

"Once we do that, then the only thing left in Essex will be some networking equipment to connect some stuff from the town of Essex back to here," Pazos said.

While Essex is taking advantage of all the services offered, cities and towns that approach Melrose for IT services in the future can also pick and choose which services they want, Pazos said.

"So if you came to me and said you want just the file storage, I can pick out all the other pieces (in the agreement) and now you get a much shorter agreement and we go forward," he said. "This first agreement was very important for us because once we get it right, now we can replicate this agreement over and over again."