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Mass Innovations, From the Beacon, March 2014
Amherst and Northampton, two communities that already share some social services, are moving toward sharing cloud-based financial management software.
In February, the two municipalities received a Community Innovation Challenge grant of $180,000 intended to build on the information technology infrastructure that Amherst has developed in recent years. The grant, according to Amherst officials, will enable the town to share its financial management software at a cost significantly lower than what Northampton is paying to a private-sector vendor.
Other cities and towns “are paying a pretty substantial fee to their existing service providers,” said Amherst Town Manager John Musante. “We think we can do it faster and cheaper.
“We have a very robust computer system with servers and data storage,” Musante added. “There are ways to share those resources and save our neighbors a lot of money while at the same time offsetting some of our sunk costs.”
Amherst IT Director Kris Pacunas said that the project should be completed about a year from now. Northampton, he said, should realize a savings of more than 50 percent in Internet services costs in the first year of service.
Over the longer term, Northampton will also benefit from not having to buy new servers every few years, Pacunas added.
The servers will be stored at the Amherst Police Department.
“It’s manned 24/7 by armed guards,” Pacunas said. “It’s got generating power and redundant everything. There really couldn’t be a better anything than a data center that is literally inside your police department.”
Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz pointed out that the two communities already share several functions, including veterans’ services and public health services.
In addition to being almost-neighboring communities, Northampton and Amherst are part of a five-college network that ensures high-capacity broadband service in the region, Narkewicz said.
Amherst also received a share of two other Community Innovation Challenge grants. A $25,000 grant will be used toward hosting West Springfield’s property-assessment data. Amherst already has such an arrangement with Pelham.
Amherst also is part of a cloud-computing grant awarded to the Hampshire Council of Governments. Amherst will be providing some of the server capacity that the cloud-computing project requires.
For more information, contact Kris Pacunas at (413) 259-3098.