CONSENT AGENDA

TR14419 -  A Resolution of the City Commission of the City of Tamarac, Florida, approving a three (3) year VMware Software Subscription, Maintenance and Support renewal through Redesign Group, attached hereto as Exhibit “1”, at a total cost of $151,248.00; authorizing expenditures from the appropriate accounts; authorizing the appropriate City Officials to approve renewal options; providing for conflicts; providing for scrivener errors; providing for severability; and providing for an effective date.

The Chief Information Officer recommends that the Mayor and City Commission approve a three (3) year VMware software subscription, maintenance, and support renewal through Redesign Group in the total amount of $151,248.00, utilizing State of Florida NASPO Cloud Solutions Contract AR2472 (43230000-NASPO16-ACS), at its August 26, 2026, meeting. The City of Tamarac's net share is $139,104.00 after reimbursement of $12,144.00 from the Town of Southwest Ranches.

Technology is one of the key components in the efficient delivery of City services, and the City's network infrastructure, server infrastructure, data and facilities are critical to ensuring continued operations.

A server is a specialized computer that runs and stores the software applications, data, and technology services used by an organization. City servers support many critical business functions, including the City's telephone system, financial and permitting applications, public safety-related services, file storage, and other day-to-day operations.

Virtualization allows one physical server to securely operate multiple independent virtual servers. Before virtualization, each major application commonly required its own physical server, which resulted in more equipment, greater data center space requirements, higher electricity and cooling consumption, additional backup infrastructure, and increased hardware replacement and maintenance costs. Virtualization consolidates these workloads onto fewer physical servers while improving flexibility, redundancy, disaster recovery capabilities, and the ability to restore or move systems when equipment fails.

The City moved to a virtualized server environment in September 2010 and selected VMware, one of the pioneers of enterprise virtualization and, for many years, the industry gold standard because of its mature features, reliability, functionality, and broad vendor support. VMware has since become the foundation for many critical City applications and services.

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023. Since the acquisition, the City has experienced a significant decline in the responsiveness and accessibility of VMware sales and support, substantial changes to the licensing and reseller models, and pricing that has increased to nearly three (3) times the City's prior cost. Broadcom has also reduced the number of vendors authorized to provide VMware quotations, making it exceedingly difficult to obtain multiple competitive quotes.

The City met with Broadcom on June 3, 2026, to discuss the renewal and formally request pricing because the City's previous reseller, vPrime, is no longer authorized to sell VMware subscriptions.  The City’s prior one (1) year renewal cost thru vPrime was $58,664.48. Broadcom now offers only one (1) year and three (3) year subscription terms; a two (2) year option is unavailable.

The City contacted numerous authorized vendors and requested pricing using existing competitively bid contracts available for cooperative purchasing or piggybacking. The results are summarized below.

The quote from Redesign Group was the lowest responsible and responsive quote and utilizes the State of Florida NASPO Cloud Solutions Contract AR2472 (43230000-NASPO16-ACS), a competitively bid contract awarded by the State of Florida Department of Management Services and available for the use and benefit of governmental entities in compliance with applicable state procurement laws and regulations. The contract is valid from August 1, 2017, through September 15, 2026.

Reference:

https://www.dms.myflorida.com/business_operations/state_purchasing/state_contracts_and_agreements/alternate_contract_source/cloud_solutions

The City cannot realistically transition to another virtualization platform in less than one (1) year because of the number and complexity of the systems involved. The City currently operates approximately 160 virtual servers, down from approximately 210, and expects to eliminate or migrate approximately 30 additional servers in the near future to its new cloud environment. Each remaining server must be evaluated, tested, migrated, and validated without disrupting City operations.

The City's Cisco telephone system is an especially important consideration. For redundancy, the telephone system's virtual servers and applications operate in both the Network Operations Center and the City Hall IT Data Center. There are certain alternative to VMware available such as Microsoft Hyper-V.  However, while Microsoft Hyper-V is a possible alternative virtualization platform and may be suitable for some City systems, it has important limitations applicable to the City's current environment. In particular, the City's Cisco telephone system applications are fully supported in VMware but are not fully supported in Microsoft Hyper-V. Replacing VMware could therefore require a different supported platform, new server hardware, a broader telephone system change, or a future migration of the telephone system to a cloud-hosted solution.

Although alternatives to VMware are available, moving to another platform is neither simple nor quick. A transition would require extensive planning, compatibility testing, staff training, application migrations, outage coordination, and, for several alternatives, the purchase of new server and storage hardware. This is not an advantageous time to make a rushed hardware purchase because enterprise memory and storage costs are currently significantly elevated.

At the same time, the City is actively reducing its dependence on VMware. The Information Technology Department is migrating eligible on-premises servers to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment, but this work is ongoing and is expected to require approximately another year to complete. Some systems cannot immediately be moved because of application requirements, vendor support limitations, integration dependencies, cost, or operational considerations.

The City has also reduced, or is in the process of reducing, the number of physical servers supporting the virtual environment and has eliminated several remote VMware deployments that are no longer necessary. The Network Operations Center VMware environment has been reduced from four physical hosts to three, and the dedicated VMware hosts previously located at Fire Station 15 and the Water Treatment Plant are no longer required. These workloads can be securely supported by the central environment using the City's resilient fiber-optic network, thereby reducing licensing, hardware, electricity, cooling, backup, and future replacement costs.

Additionally, as the full-service information technology provider for the Town of Southwest Ranches, the City manages the Town's virtual environment, which consists of one physical server operating VMware. Of the total renewal cost, $12,144.00 is allocated to the Town and will be reimbursed to the City.

A three (3) year renewal provides the most practical bridge between the City's current operational requirements and its long-term technology strategy. It avoids the unacceptable risk of attempting a complex migration in less than one (1) year, provides cost predictability during a period of rapidly changing VMware pricing, and allows the City to coordinate any future platform changes with existing server and storage replacement cycles rather than purchasing equipment prematurely.

Over the next one to three years, the Information Technology Department will continue migrating servers to AWS whenever operationally and financially practical, further consolidate the remaining on-premises environment, evaluate viable and cost-effective VMware alternatives, and assess whether the Cisco telephone system can be migrated to a cloud-based solution. Any recommended replacement will be timed, where possible, with the City's established hardware replacement cycles to avoid unnecessary expenditures and reduce implementation risk.

Accordingly, the three (3) year VMware renewal is necessary to protect continuity of operations while giving the City sufficient time to complete its cloud migration and develop a deliberate, supportable, and cost-effective replacement strategy.

The City's existing VMware subscription and support coverage expires on August 15, 2026. Renewal is necessary to maintain uninterrupted operation, security updates, software patches, product support, and technical assistance for critical City systems while the Information Technology Department continues its planned transition to cloud services and evaluates long-term alternatives.