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10.17.07
State Of California Looking For VAR Help
 By Chris Crum
The state of California is calling on Value Added Resellers for help with state IT contracts.
At GovernmentVAR's State & Local Roadshow in Sacramento last week, Arnold Schwarzenegger's special IT advisor, California state CIO J. Clark Kelso said that the state currently has 10 contracts over $10 million and as many as 11,500 under $500,000.
"Many departments have much smaller projects," Kelso is quoted as saying. "What [VARs] want to be doing is exploring what departments are doing what to improve their business management systems. I would encourage you to approach these departments if [their projects] are in your area of expertise."
CRN reports:
Kelso said that the state has dozens of legacy IT systems that it can no longer maintain because the managers who designed or maintain the systems have either retired or will do so in the near future. "We've run out of time on legacy applications and we can't continue to maintain them," he said. "We've been reliant on small handful of individuals and they have retired or are planning to retire. Many of these systems are non-manageable, not because they are broken, but because we don't have any people around that know how to keep them running."
As a result, California has launched a broad initiative to update the state's IT systems. But Kelso acknowledged that the state is looking at a projected shortfall $5 billion to $6 billion for fiscal 2008, which may slow down some of these large IT projects such as the $1.5 billion Fi$Cal project to update the executive branch ERP systems.
But despite the shortfall, the broad IT mandate coupled with the fact that 50 percent of the state's IT workforce is eligible to retire over the next five years, creates a potential boon for VARs.
A few areas the state is looking for help in according to CRN, are document management, web development and LAN/WAN services as well as advice on consolidation and virtualization of servers.
Kelso did advise VARs to stay away from the area of computer hadware and peripherals saying, "We've driven almost everything out of the margins on PCs, laptops, printers, peripherals and certain servers".
About the Author:
Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.
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