DESKTOP REFRESH JUSTIFICATION.DOCX

Maricopa County Treasurer
Desktop/Laptop Refresh Justification
Last Updated: 2/18/2014 11:36 AM

Overview
This document discusses the need for replacing the Treasurer’s aging workstation fleet. The Treasurer
computing needs are fulfilled by a combination of desktop and laptop workstations. Adequate
computer hardware and software are essential to the employee’s ability to efficiently accomplish their
jobs. That requirement also needs to be balanced with the financial limitations of the department and
the county as a whole.
It has been generally accepted practice to refresh desktops and laptops every 3-5 years. Once
workstations age beyond that lifetime the cost of maintenance and support increase significantly. This
maintenance cost increase is attributed to failed part replacement (i.e. hard drives, motherboards,
monitors, etc…) no longer covered by warranty. The Treasurer desktop and laptop systems were last
refreshed in February, 2008 and have not been covered by any warranty maintenance for some time
now. This makes the Treasurer’s workstation fleet over 6 years old, well beyond the typical refresh
timeframe. Over the last year, we are starting to see more hardware failures of disk drives, monitors,
and other components. Further, the older hardware configurations tend to perform less than optimally
with the more recent versions of the operating systems and software applications as they have evolved
over time.
We are aware of the effort currently underway in OET to study the place of VDI (Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure) technology in Maricopa County. This study just commenced in January, 2014 and will
continue for a few more months. It is anticipated that the analysis of the study results and the planning
and implementation of a potential test pilot of the technology will take considerably more time. It is our
opinion that the Treasurer’s computing needs and condition of the existing 6-year-old desktop and
laptop fleet cannot wait for any VDI direction to take shape and be adopted by Maricopa County as a
whole. Therefore, we request that the funding for a refresh of desktop and laptop workstations be
made available to the Treasurer’s Office.
Funding Information
The cost of a departmental desktop/laptop refresh is estimated to be $155,300. The following table
summarizes further details.
Description Count1 Amount
Standard Desktop 75 $112,500
High-End Desktop 16 $28,800
Standard Laptop 7 $14,000
Total $155,300
1 The desktop and laptop counts reflect equipment to cover all FTE as well as additional computing
needs. These additional computing needs include equipment for seasonal temporary employees; user
training, testing, and quality assurance; public-use workstations maintained in the Treasurer’s public
lobby; and back-office scanning needs.