Saugus to regionalize information technology services with Melrose

SAUGUS – Selectmen unanimously approved a new three-year agreement with the city of Melrose to regionalize Saugus? information technology services Tuesday night, a deal that will save the town the steep costs of updating its own aging infrastructure.?We are far behind on the town side with technology,” said Town Manager Scott Crabtree during Tuesday night?s meeting. “(Melrose) has infrastructure that allows more than one municipality to share in their infrastructure and services ? Looking at the options and balancing it, it?s quite a bit of savings for the town and taxpayers.”Crabtree said it would be a huge challenge to upgrade the town?s databases, recovery systems and servers, which he said could cost as much as $200,000 to do plus an additional $75,000 a year to maintain.The deal with Melrose would cost the town just $30,000 per year and would include all annual costs and fees. Crabtree also said it will also free up man hours for Saugus? IT director to help individuals in town and deal with and the town?s own infrastructure issues.?That?s an important aspect in trying to use the resources that we have,” said Crabtree. “That?s an added benefit. The benefit of that is there is costs involved in having an annual service to back up data, which is all included in the agreement. It allows us to have more capacity to bring up infrastructure in this building and other buildings that really hasn?t been touched in over a decade.”George Pazos, the information technology director for Melrose, said the city has already regionalized with the town of Essex and noted similar deals are becoming more common.?A lot of the savings that are realized are realized through shared services,” he said. “If you look around in the private sector and in the public sector, sharing of services is not uncommon. This is a really good agreement. It?s beneficial for both of us.”Pazos said financial software and email servers plus data backup will all be housed in Melrose along with a separate, off-site data back up center in case of emergencies.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].