IT modernization sets up
a data-driven future

Customer profile

The City of Amarillo, Texas, accelerated a much-needed IT
modernization with hyperconverged infrastructure and virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI), improving departmental performance,
employee productivity and citizen services delivery.

State & Local Government | United States““We saved $800,000 in recurring
hardware-refresh costs for our police cars
by making our VMware Horizon VDI amobile solution supported by VxRail.”
Richard Gagnon
CIO, City of Amarillo, Texas

Organization needs
Amarillo’s aged IT infrastructure was complicated andcostly to operate and maintain, with widespread security
vulnerabilities. Departments and employees worked withsuch a patchwork of different technologies that they were
not as effective or productive as they could be, which
ultimately affected the quality of citizen services.

Organization results•

Cut first-responder response times by 60%.

•Saved $800,000 in police car hardware costs.

•Set up a 75-person call center in 1.5 days.

•

Consolidated 7 storage platforms to 1.

•Improved end-point and data center
management and security.

Solutions at a glance•

Dell EMC VxRail Hyperconverged
Infrastructure•

Dell EMC Data Protection andBackup Solutions•

Dell Financial Services•

VMware Horizon•

VMware Professional Services1

With 200,000 people, the City of Amarillo—in the heart of thevast and isolated expanse of the Texas Panhandle—operates
with a wider scope than its size might suggest. That’s
because it serves the needs not only of its own citizens but
also people traveling for healthcare, entertainment and otherservices from eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma andsouthern Colorado.
Richard Gagnon, the city’s chief information officer, assumed
his post in 2016, after a stellar career as a high-ranking
executive with three global high-tech companies. An Amarillo
resident himself, he had previously joined the City of Amarillo
when the city decided to upgrade its operational leadershipwith private-sector talent. “That’s when I decided I could afford
to downshift and work in the community I call home,” he says.
“I’d been all about driving profitability, but had to learn whatmakes good government work, especially innovation.”

Clarifying the road aheadGagnon’s first day on the job was an eye-opener. “I walked
into my office that first day to find a Windows 7 PC with a
19-inch monitor and Office 2007 waiting for me,” he recalls,describing the state of the city’s information technology atthe time. “We literally had to start at Layer 1 and get a new
networking infrastructure in place. The network was large
and flat with Layer 3 firewalls, all of it extremely vulnerable
to security breaches. We also had seven different types ofstorage, so data was everywhere. And our public-safety
officers badly needed a laptop refresh in their vehicles.”If those challenges weren’t enough, the city’s 49 departments,from public safety and health to water treatment and waste
collection, were all operating on different IT roadmaps. “Beinga private-sector guy, I faced a lot of internal skepticism about
the changes needed and my urgency to enact them,” Gagnon
says. “But I have to hand it to my IT team. Keeping all thislegacy infrastructure operating meant they had to really
stretch their resourcefulness and creativity.”“We spun up a 75-person
virtual call center for remotepublic-health clinics in just aday and a half using our VxRailsupported VDI.”
Richard Gagnon
CIO, City of Amarillo, Texas

2

VDI’s biggest benefits

Reduced PC
boot-up timesby 95%.

VDI has been a big win for the city in several ways. One,it simplified the overall management of client endpoints
for several thousand city workers, which improved theirproductivity by cutting boot-up times from 10 minutes tojust 36 seconds. Two, the city deployed VDI in its refresh oflaptops in police cruisers and other first-responder vehicles.
“We saved $800,000 in hardware-refresh costs for our policecars by making our VMware Horizon VDI a mobile solution
supported by VxRail,” Gagnon says.
VDI’s third advantage emerged when all but essential city
employees had to start working from home almost overnight,
in keeping with the city’s own shelter-in-place mandates
since the onset of the 2020 pandemic.

Broad portfolio, attractive financing

For assistance, Gagnon sought competitive bids and chose
Dell Technologies as Amarillo’s IT modernization partner forboth the city’s comprehensive portfolio of hardware, softwareand services as well as an attractive lease arrangementfrom Dell Financial Services that would help to minimize
its capital expenditures.
Gagnon especially liked the potential benefits of deploying theDell EMC VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), poweredby Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, VMware HCI software andVxRail HCI System Software. The combination consolidates
compute, storage and virtualization with end-to-end automatedlifecycle management.
The pairing of the Dell EMC HCI with a facilitated acquisition
model is the hallmark of Dell Technologies On Demand. It
provided the City of Amarillo with a comprehensive solution toits needs, eliminating what would otherwise be a substantial
upfront capital expense and also saving procurement andfinance staff time to find a financing source.
In all, the city installed 29 nodes in various cluster
configurations for different workloads. Among them are VDI,
public-safety functions and disaster recovery. The latter utilizes
Dell EMC Data Protection and Backup Solutions to automate
data backup and restoration. VMware Professional Services
was chosen to help implement VDI using VMware Horizon.

“Of course, large numbers of employees remained essential
workers, but for those who could work from home, we wereable to stand them up practically overnight, which would’ve
been impossible before our IT modernization,” Gagnon says.
“In fact, we spun up a 75-person virtual call center for remotepublic-health clinics in just a day and a half using our VxRailsupported VDI.”““Desktop management isa breeze with the VMware
Horizon VDI, and we’ll saveweeks of data center staff
time each year with theautomated VxRail upgrades.”Richard Gagnon
CIO, City of Amarillo, Texas

3

““We cut our 911
response times by 60
percent, thanks in partto the analytics madepossible by our VxRailenabled IT modernization.”
Richard Gagnon
CIO, City of Amarillo, Texas

Simplified data anddevice management

The modernization effort has helped Amarillo simplify data
management by reducing its seven storage platforms to justone: VxRail HCI. And the HCI approach saves data center
space and IT staff time—especially with its intelligent lifecycle
management that automates nondisruptive upgrades,patches, and node additions and retirements—while keeping
VxRail clusters in continuously validated states.
“Desktop management is a breeze with the VMware Horizon
VDI, and we’ll save weeks of data center staff time each yearwith the automated VxRail upgrades,” Gagnon says. “We’ve
hardened our security many times over, too, including special
protections against ransomware.”As the city’s IT modernization continues—with all but a few
legacy applications now running on the VxRail HCI—Gagnon
and his team have shifted more into consulting roles. They’reworking with their fellow departments to align roadmaps,
consolidate governance and start using data analytics tooptimize performance and improve services delivery.
For example, Gagnon’s team is working with the police
department to analyze its dispatch data to better optimize
first-response measures. “Our analysts at the police
department cut our 911 response times by 60 percent, thanks
in part to the analytics made possible by our VxRail-enabled
IT modernization,” he says. “That’s a huge benefit to thecommunity’s public safety.”
Looking ahead, Gagnon sees many more opportunities toenhance Amarillo’s operations using VxRail. Among them,he envisions tying in edge-computing devices and taking
advantage of the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform, VMware
Cloud Foundation on VxRail. “Our next big moves are aroundexpanding automation, both for operations and security, andour use of analytics,” he says. “We want to be a data-driven
city, and our VxRail modernization is helping to get us there.”

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