Meet the Town of Westlake, Texas:
The Town of Westlake proves that size doesn’t limit vision. This 2,000-resident community, located along the Tarrant and Denton county border northwest of the DFW Airport, Westlake combines a rural Texas atmosphere with the conveniences of the metroplex.
The town’s government is frequently recognized for this innovation by the Site Selectors Guild in Economic Development, the 3CMA Savvy Award of Excellence, the ICM Strategic Leadership, and the governance award. These and other awards recognize the staff’s commitment to innovation and service to their community.
Daily Detour: When OnPrem Software Creates Chaos
Jason Power is the Director of Information Technology for the Town of Westlake, TX. He’s responsible for overseeing all of the technology and cybersecurity concerns both for the municipal government and the charter school that the town runs.
Under his leadership, the town used self-hosted Laserfiche to store and organize data for several departments, but they didn’t have a database administrator to support them. This meant that Jason was drawn away from his big-picture duties to monitor server performance, perform routine maintenance, and back up data.
“There comes a time when you really need a SQL guy to look at this,” he said.
About the Client
CLIENT NAME:
CHAMPION:
Jason Power
IT Director
POPULATION:
2,000 residents
SOLUTIONS:
Meet the Town of Westlake, Texas:
The Town of Westlake proves that size doesn’t limit vision. This 2,000-resident community, located along the Tarrant and Denton county border northwest of the DFW Airport, Westlake combines a rural Texas atmosphere with the conveniences of the metroplex.
The town’s government is frequently recognized for this innovation by the Site Selectors Guild in Economic Development, the 3CMA Savvy Award of Excellence, the ICM Strategic Leadership, and the governance award. These and other awards recognize the staff’s commitment to innovation and service to their community.
Daily Detour: When OnPrem Software Creates Chaos
Jason Power is the Director of Information Technology for the Town of Westlake, TX. He’s responsible for overseeing all of the technology and cybersecurity concerns both for the municipal government and the charter school that the town runs.
Under his leadership, the town used self-hosted Laserfiche to store and organize data for several departments, but they didn’t have a database administrator to support them. This meant that Jason was drawn away from his big-picture duties to monitor server performance, perform routine maintenance, and back up data.
“There comes a time when you really need a SQL guy to look at this,” he said.
Jason began investigating possibilities. He knew he needed a hosting solution that was secure, flexible, and scalable, and wouldn’t eat into his team’s valuable time. Their team didn’t have the bandwidth to handle their own cloud infrastructure.
Laserfiche Cloud was not an option because it’s CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) compliant, and they use Laserfiche to store CJIS data like traffic tickets.
The Solution: Laserfiche in Managed Cloud
So, Jason talked to MCCi, the Town of Westlake’s long-time Laserfiche solution provider. The more he learned about MCCi Managed Cloud, the more he came to realize the benefits of completely removing server management from his team’s plate.
For Jason, Managed Cloud means peace of mind that his town’s data is safe. But it also means the freedom to do his job, because MCCi support is just a phone call away!
“It was kind of a no-brainer because it was one less thing for us to worry about.”
In very little time, MCCi deployed a cloud architecture to meet the town’s needs:
Security: MCCi Managed Cloud is hosted on Microsoft Azure Government Cloud with the highest security standards. Jason knew his town’s data would be secure.
Flexibility: The team didn’t need to worry about forecasting demand to handle peak server usage.
Scalability: As the town grows, its storage needs will grow too. Managed Cloud allows them to pay only for the storage they need. It’s easy to upgrade if they approach their storage limit.
The Results: Migrating to the Cloud
MCCi ensured the cloud transition would be so seamless, most people outside of IT wouldn’t even know anything had changed! The Town of Westlake had about 6 TB of data in their Laserfiche system to transfer to the managed cloud.
“With our connection and the speed of MCCi’s connection, we had everything up within a few days, actually. Then we just did nightly syncs to keep it up to date during the migration.”
The cutover time when migrating to Managed Cloud was under an hour.
“We did that on a Friday afternoon. Everybody was happy to be like, ‘Oh, I can’t do anything but go home!’”