Macon IT Department Saves Thousands With ‘Green’ Changes

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT)- The City of Macon’s IT Department received a massive system upgrade that’s saving the city thousands of dollars.

The city’s network now operates 5,000 times faster than the old system.

“Employees aren’t sitting there waiting for a file to download or waiting for an email to open. It’s much more instantaneous,” says Network administrator, Kerry Hatcher.

Hatcher says the old system was failing and was years behind in technology, which forced the IT Department to scavenge parts anywhere they could find them.

“We had different power supplies that were just not working any more, and if anyone thing would come along we would have just been dead in the water,” says Hatcher.

The system upgrade took place over the Martin Luther King Holiday. Director of the IT Department, Stephen Masteller, says, “It’s just a pretty big leap. We jumped into the modern world.”

The cutting edge technology is saving the city more than $62,000 a year.

Network and System Consultant Clifford Morey says, “The cost effectiveness of maintaining an older inventory of hardware is unreasonable.”

The system upgrade also created virtual servers.  Instead of 34 physical servers the city now only uses 3. The virtual servers make it easier for the computer techs to work on the servers without actually have to be on them. Plus, with less servers more than 93,000 watts of energy is getting saved.

“That’s the equivalent of 930 100watt light bulbs running 365 days a year 24 hours a day,” says Morey.