Innovative colocation strategy safeguards essential operations for a growing municipality

The history

Growing 1-2% annually, this western U.S. city continues to attract major national employers, homebuilders, and developers across its three-county footprint, making it one of the region’s fastest-expanding municipalities. 

Technology is integral to nearly every city function, from providing emergency response support and essential utilities to fostering community engagement and business growth.

The challenge 

Outdated IT infrastructure fails to meet rising digital demands 

The on-site IT infrastructure powering the city’s operations, including critical emergency response services, was not equipped to keep pace with the rapid increase of digital requirements and the ever-growing reliance on technology to support essential functions. 

Details: The increasing demand for technology services, combined with aging infrastructure, led to more frequent outages and declining performance, often disrupting city operations. The city’s technology team was faced with limited options to retrofit on-site infrastructure as adding space and processing capacity proved to be cost-prohibitive.

The solution 

Purpose-built solution and strategic support ensure seamless IT operations

The city leveraged a Flexential tailored colocation hosting solution, quickly moving critical infrastructure to a modern data center featuring fully redundant power and an energy-efficient cooling system. 

Key features: The city’s colocation strategy, coupled with replacing aging technology, significantly increased network capacity and flexibility. The city is well-positioned with more room to grow and the necessary infrastructure to scale efficiently in response to evolving demands. 

“Flexential had the capabilities to meet our requirements and offered us the adaptability to work within our parameters,” said the city’s CIO. “I can trust Flexential to be there for us when we need assistance, from small requests to strategic support. It’s more than just procuring space; it’s a business partnership we can rely on.” 

Flexential 100% network and bandwidth uptime commitment provided reassurance that speed and reliability were consistently maintained to keep the city’s essential systems running. 

Colocation marks the first phase of the city’s technology modernization roadmap. 

Flexential tailored infrastructure solutions will enable seamless scalability and support the city’s transition to the cloud. 

Implementation: Flexential expedited the implementation to accommodate the city’s accelerated timelines and ensure continuity of services. 

Flexential not only had space available, but many of the foundational requirements were already in place ahead of implementation. 

Creating close lines of communication was essential for rapid deployment. The Flexential team established a cadence of ongoing communications with the city to provide timely status updates, answer questions, and troubleshoot issues quickly. 

Flexential Remote Hands Service, which offers technical experts 24/7, was also a resource for the city’s technology team. 

In addition to leveraging Flexential staffing resources, geo-proximity was an important consideration. It provided the city’s technology team with the space needed to stage work and easily travel between data center locations.

The results 

Tailored strategy boosts performance and strengthens public safety for the city

Performance: Leading-edge colocation strategy supports critical public safety services and residents’ quality of life. 

Efficiency: The municipality adopted a tailored colocation plan to address increasing bandwidth usage while also creating agility to scale for future network needs. 

Customer experience: The city’s thriving community is supported by modern services that prioritize residents’ safety and daily needs. Residents can trust their city to provide critical services when it matters most.