Committee renews $423,841 Cisco Smartnet support for county network devices

The Lake County Technology Committee approved a renewal of Cisco Smartnet services with Logical Callus (Downers Grove, Illinois) on April 3, authorizing $423,841 to cover support for the county’s network devices, including switches and routers that form the county’s network backbone.

CIO Chris Blaney said the contract provides security patching, hardware replacement and tiered response (24/7 four‑hour, eight‑hour or next‑day options) appropriate to device criticality. He described the contract as analogous to insurance for network hardware: it includes monitoring and advanced vendor escalation for critical outages.

Members asked about price trends. Eric Fredericksen, the county help desk manager, joined the discussion earlier in the meeting to describe proactive PC purchasing, and Blaney and others explained that vendors include contract language allowing up to a 10% annual renewal increase without returning to the committee; that does not mean a 10% increase will occur, they said, but the industry trend reflects chip and memory shortages that have raised hardware costs.

A motion to approve the renewal was made (motion by Robert; second by Casben), the committee voted in favor and the motion carried.