The document summarizes the City of Grand Rapids' transformation to an IT as a Service (ITaaS) model through a partnership with Dewpoint. It discusses the strategic needs that necessitated the change and the journey through three phases: refreshing technology, stabilizing operations, and fully transforming to an ITaaS model supported locally, regionally, and nationally. It highlights perspectives of success including empowered business units, focused IT, cost reductions, and a reproducible program.

1. Strategic, Sustainable and Industry Aligned
Doug Start, Information Technology Manager

2. City of Grand Rapids- 30,000 ft. View
Second Largest
City in Michigan
1,450 Users 1,700 Devices
BYOD
Environment
ITaaS Shop IaaS Shop
Dell, EMC, Cisco,
Liebert, Mac

3. City of Grand Rapids- 30,000 ft. View
 265 Locations
 Police Department
 Fire Department
 Water Treatment Plant- City & LMFP
 Sewer
 Trash
 Facilities and Fleet
 Court
 Parking
 Golf Course
 City Hall

4. Sustainability in Jeopardy
SaaS
Business
Intelligence
Mobile
Everything
Cloud
Everything
Interfaces and
Integrations
Dashboards Digital Office
Digital Online
Services

5. Strategic
Pace of IT
• Technical Needs Expanding.
• Technical Needs were Business Process Embedded.
• Technical Services were Becoming Critical.
Recruitment and Retention of Professionals
• Developed Relationships and Talent Pools
• Budgets
• Competing With Meijer, Spectrum Health and the Medical Mile, Amway,
Steelcase, Herman Miller, and now Switch.
• We needed to get to vendor agnostic and a deep bench of talent but remain
agile enough to address emerging technology needs.
Managed Services

6. Journey to ITaaS
Phase 1- Refresh and Transform
• 4 year Refresh
• Industry Aligned
• Full Cost Allocation to the Business Units

7. Journey to ITaaS
Phase 2- Stabilization
• 3 Year Maturation
• Maturation of Best Practice and Governance Aligned to ITIL
• Affirmed by Audits in Security, Allocation, and Operations
• Addressed Disaster Recovery, SaaS and “The Cloud”
• Benchmarking for Development of Full ITaaS SLA

8. Journey to ITaaS
Phase 3: GRIT Transformed with Partner Dewpoint
• ITaaS Aligned to SLA in Network, Server, Desktop, Solutions
• Statements of Work for Additional Projects
• Core is Aligned and Supported Locally, Regionally, and Nationally

9. Layers of Support- 24 x 7 x 365
Local Support
On Premise
Resources
Remote
Support
Regional Support
Strategic
Relationships
Additional
Service
Providers
National Support
EA Agreements Contract Services

10. Support of the Stack

11. Support of Solutions

12. Challenges to Transformation
Digital Sticky Middle
• The DMZ where it is not owned by IT because it’s not operational, but at the same time it’s
not owned by the business unit because it is not a business unit function.
• “I’m not a subject matter expert” comes to wrestle with “I’m not technical”.
• The land of governance, best practice, and evolution of software that is home to the User
Group.

13. Challenges to Transformation
Shock of Change- Tip Toe in the Water
Business Practice
• ROI & TCO
• Continuity
• Process
Alignment
Change
Management
• PMO Concepts
• IT Cost
Allocation
Vendor
Engagement
• Service Delivery
• SOW’s
• VRM

14. Perspectives of Success
Organizational Success
• Business Units are Empowered
• IT is Focused on IT
• No Longer Resource “Hunting”
• Options for Escalation
• Ability to Scale Up or Down
• Answer is always “YES”
• Program is Reproducible

15. Perspectives of Success
Financial Success
• 88% of Costs are Openly Competed
• 34% Reduction of Overall IT Costs Through Alignment and Transformation
• 24% Reduction of Resource Costs through ITaaS

16. Questions

17. THANK YOU!
Douglas M. Start
Information Technology Manager
City of Grand Rapids
Email: dstart@grcity.us
www.linkedin.com/in/douglasmstart