The California Department of Technology (CDT) spent $7,569,259 on those top five expenditures, with the vast majority of that — nearly $6 million — on the top purchase. The remaining four that round out the top five purchases comprised a combined spend of $1,665,305. Here’s what CDT spent, with rounding:
• $5.9 million with Direct Systems Support, likely the San Diego tech company, for “IBM Mainframe Storage Hardware – Gold Camp,” on a four-year contract that runs Oct. 30-Oct. 29, 2024. “Gold Camp” probably refers to state-owned data centers in Rancho Cordova. And as Richard Rogers, deputy state chief information officer and CDT's chief deputy director, said at last year’s California Digital Government Summit, mainframe “is not obsolete.”
• $910,000, also with Direct Systems Support and likely at state-owned data centers in Rancho Cordova, for “IBM AIX Hardware Upgrade.” This contract is for a little more than three years, from Oct. 30-March 14, 2024. IBM’s Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) operating system, which debuted in 1986, is Unix-based and is often used for enterprise-level servers.
• $299,000 with Sacramento’s QualApps Inc., for “Salesforce Add-On Other Tableau Online Broadcast Service,” on a one-year contract from Oct. 29-Oct. 28, 2021. This could well connect to the fact that in September, Tableau debuted a new way to embed its analytics in Salesforce.
• $248,000 with Blast Analytics and Marketing Inc. of Roseville, for “Google Analytics 360 Software Subscription License,” for “up to 2,000,000,000 hits/month,” and apparently structured with a “Fee per month, $20,667*12.” This, too is for a one-year term, from Oct. 1-Sept. 30, 2021 — and is probably a reference to Google’s analytics suite.
• $208,000 with Levi, Ray & Shoup Inc. of Springfield, Ill., for “MNF – VPS Software Support Renewal,” on a one-year contract from Oct. 1-Sept. 30, 2021. That’s likely a reference to renewing software support for a virtual private server — possibly from Australian tech company MNF Group.
