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Exhibit A - Proposal - 2021-07-01Managed Information Technology Services Request For Proposal Information Technology Management Services Costa Mesa Sanitary DistrictPresented on Thursday, May 27th, 2021 Acorn Technology Services 1960 Chicago Ave, Ste E9 Riverside, CA 92507 951.784.3500 (office) 951.320.7066 (fax) www.acorntechservices.com May 27, 2021 Costa Mesa Sanitary District 290 Paularino Avenue Costa Mesa, CA 92626 RE: RFP for Information Technology Management Services for Costa Mesa Sanitary District Dear District Staff, Acorn Technology Services is pleased to submit the following proposal in response to the Request for Proposal for Information Technology Management Services for Costa Mesa Sanitary District, due May 27th, 2021. It is the hope and intent of the Acorn team that the reader of this proposal gains a more informed understanding of who we are and what we do. Additionally, it is our desire that Acorn’s commitment to the customer and our aspiration to be a true IT partner is exemplified throughout our proposal and our references. In this regard, several City leaders of existing customers previously wrote letters of recommendation illustrating this point and are included in our proposal as attachments. As we have done many times in the past and on current projects, we seek balanced solutions for our clients, bringing significant experience and flexibility to our projects. Acorn is confident that we have the experience, resources, and infrastructure necessary to deliver outstanding service that will meet or exceed the District's short-term requirements and long-term IT objectives. Acorn’s proposal is valid for 60-days from this submittal and Acorn is prepared and staffed to begin work immediately on the Scope of Services. Thank you for the opportunity to compete for the District’s business and I look forward to working with you in our joint efforts to provide the Costa Mesa Sanitary District with the quality Initial Assessment and ongoing Managed IT Services that it seeks. Sincerely, Mickey McGuire Chief Executive Officer 1960 Chicago Ave, Ste E9 Riverside, CA 92507 951.784.3500 main 951.320.7066 fax mmcguire@acorntechservices.com COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 1 of 45 2)DESCRIPTION OF FIRM Acorn Technology Services was originally founded in 2000, and is located in the Riverside Business Technology Park in Riverside, California. For 20 years, Acorn maintained and operated two of its own data centers; provided wireless communication networks to Southern California businesses; designed, built, and maintained IT networks for entities ranging from just a few employees to more than one thousand employees. Acorn’s customers cross into 17 states, Canada, and Germany. We proudly serve municipalities, libraries, and other local government agencies in Southern California, including agencies with a responsibility to public safety with police departments and fire departments. Our team of 50+ members has the depth and breadth of extensive experience in providing Information Technology Services, including but not limited to: General IT assessments, IT risk assessments, strategic planning, project management, Managed IT Services; desktop support, server and network administration; systems design and implementation; disaster recovery; vulnerability scans, critical systems monitoring, system documentation, software and equipment vendor management, and maintenance with 24 x 7 x 365 technical support. Using our experience from onboarding and supporting the IT needs for our other municipality and service distracts, such as the City of Monrovia, City of South Pasadena, the City of Covina, Rubidoux Community Services District and Alpine Users Water Association, along with the City of La Quinta, the City of Calimesa, and the City of Huntington Beach, our team will be able to effectively meet the needs of the Costa Mesa Sanitary District. Acorn’s profile described throughout this proposal will demonstrate Acorn’s core competencies, how those are well-suited to meet the needs of the District, and how our success in developing and maintaining long-term relationships are illustrative of our values. This plan lays out the proposed processes and services that Acorn believes will meet the District’s technical objectives as described within the RFP. Currently, Acorn does not intend to use any consultants for this project. In the event that something unknown or untoward occurs, and requires the use of consultants, Acorn would ensure they are properly vetted and approved by the District. QUALIFICATIONS OF ASSIGNED PERSONNEL The Costa Mesa Sanitary District Project Team will be headed by Matthew Fuller as Project Manager, Araceli Nava as Account Manager, both of whom will serve as the main points of contact for the District. Acorn finds value in developing a project team that is headed by two persons, the Project Manager acting as the technical lead and the Account Manager acting as the business lead. This strategic approach allows the technical team to perform the assessment, and the business leadership team is intimately involved in the development of the overall IT strategy. Matthew and Araceli will ensure that the work Acorn does is in alignment with the District’s needs and expectations throughout the onboarding, documentation, and transition to helpdesk support. Matthew has managed an assortment of projects in both the private and public sector, with recent experience in project management for a variety of municipal organizations. Any resources assigned to the project during the onboarding process will report to Matthew. Throughout the onboarding, the project team will be available to meet with department heads and District leaders to gather the necessary information required to perform the scope of this RFP. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 2 of 45 Matthew Fuller is part of Acorn’s project management team and has experience in leading both large and small projects for municipalities, for-profit, and nonprofit organizations. His experience with public municipalities involves leading groups of technicians to assess existing technology solutions, working closely with District management to determine existing pain-points, identifying areas of improvement, analyzing risks, and developing recommendations to address clients’ needs. Matthew leverages Acorn’s pool of talent to create solutions to the identified problems and works with the assigned Account Manager to ensure they are properly aligned with the District’s goals and objectives. Working with District management and staff allows Acorn to make decisions that are focused on meeting the District’s desired technology objectives, including but not limited to the implementation of cloud services, improved network security, enhanced mobile computing, and GIS systems. Recent projects that Matthew has untaken include the assessment and onboarding of the City of Calimesa, Alhambra Civic Center Library, and large scale deployments for both the City of Monrovia, Monrovia Police Department, City of South Pasadena and South Pasadena Police Department. Araceli Nava will act as the Account Manager for the Costa Mesa Sanitary District. Acorn finds that having a dedicated primary point of contact that focuses on the business aspect of our services is valuable to customers. Araceli works with leadership of municipality clients on a weekly basis, monitoring issues, projects, and long-term planning. Some of her clients include the City of South Pasadena, Alhambra Civic Center Library, and many other for-profit and nonprofit entities. A key aspect of Araceli’s work with clients includes working with finance departments to assist in developing annual technology budgets for 3rd party services, staffing, hardware replacement schedules, and software licensing. Since the Account Manager is a part of Acorn’s business team, Araceli will also be involved in developing the IT Strategic plan, involving financial analysis and suggestion of municipality-specific hardware and software to maximize financial efficiency. These measures ensure that technology is utilized to increase business value and improve the IT service offering to both District staff as well as the community. As an Account Manager, Araceli has vast knowledge of her customers, allowing her to assist the Acorn team in providing timely and efficient support. In addition, any future requests for change can be channeled through the Account Manager who will guide the request through Acorn’s process to ensure the client’s needs are being addressed in a timely manner and fit the scope of the project parameters. Should a non-technical “customer service” issue arise, the Account Manager is there to assist. The Account Manager assigned to the District will gather an intimate knowledge of existing infrastructure, and work with the rest of the Acorn team to implement best practice solutions. The Account Manager will also keep in ongoing contact with District leadership and other department heads to address needs, attend meetings, recommend software upgrades, discuss security and disaster recovery solutions, budgetary planning, and utilize the results of the Application Portfolio assessment to suggest municipality-specific hardware and software solutions to improve the District’s performance. During the assessment, Matthew Fuller will support Araceli Nava and assist in Account Manager efforts for the Costa Mesa Sanitary District. Acorn finds that having multiple dedicated points of contact are valuable to customers. Acorn plans to have an on-site technician to support the District, for any required on-site related work. The technician will provide day-to-day support for the District and work on projects with direction from the project manager, Matthew Fuller. Acorn’s site technician’s have worked on a variety of public safety and municipality projects at the City of South Pasadena, the City of Monrovia, the City of Covina, and the City of La Quinta. Our on-site technicians directly support municipalities with over 400 end user computers and assist in new server infrastructure and server migration projects regularly. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 3 of 45 Alfred Gonzales has worked with Acorn for over 12 years on a variety of City and municipality projects at the City of South Pasadena, City of Monrovia, City of Compton (audit and assessment capacity), and City of Calimesa as the Network and Systems Engineer to assist with the onboarding, IT assessment, recommendations, and IT roadmapping. Alfred has successfully completed similar onboarding projects for the City of Monrovia and the City of Calimesa. Alfred will serve as the lead technician for the onboarding, assessment, and initial recommendations for the Costa Mesa Sanitary District. While the on-site technicians are important to the execution of the scope of work set forth in this proposal, equally important are the key personnel who will provide the District with 24/7 live Helpdesk support and real-time constant monitoring services. Our remote helpdesk, headed by our Director of Technology, James Walter and our Director of Operations, Daniel Gutierrez, is a dedicated technical team that has experience on a wide range and scale of Information Technology Service implementations, ranging from customers with just a couple of users to customers with hundreds of users at over two hundred different locations around the United States, Canada, and Germany. A simple call to our helpdesk will result in a live person answering the call, getting information about the issue, and routing the call directly to a technician who can immediately assist the user. They also monitor incoming helpdesk email requests and the monitoring tools installed at customers’ locations so that a fast and reliable response can be executed during a technical emergency. Finally, Acorn Technology Services’ CEO, Mickey McGuire, makes himself available to meet with customer executives for strategic planning efforts or simply to discuss how different technologies can be used as tools to meet strategic initiatives. Additionally, his experience allows him to assist in contract negotiations with 3rd party vendors to ensure that the District is getting the types of services they require at competitive rates. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 4 of 45 KEY STAFF MEMBERS CONTACT INFORMATION MICKEY MCGUIRE | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER mmcguire@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 MATTHEW FULLER | PROJECT MANAGER mfuller@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 ARACELI NAVA| ACCOUNT MANAGER anava@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 DANIEL GUTIERREZ | DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS jwalter@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 JAMES WALTER | DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY jwalter@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 ALFRED GONZALES| NETWORK AND SYSTEMS ENGINEER agonzales@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 RYAN WAMBOLT | SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER rwambolt@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 LYLE JONES| SENIOR NETWORK AND SYSTEMS ENGINEER ljones@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 DAVID MCKISSIC| DIRECTOR OF SECURITY SERVICES dmckissic@acorntechservices.com (951)784-3500 COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 5 of 45 ORGANIZATION CHART COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 6 of 45 3)REFERENCES & LIST OF ENGAGEMENTS Acorn Technology Services provides its services to a wide variety of organizations, municipalities, and various government agencies, both large and small. Currently, Acorn has contracted relationships for the delivery of Managed IT Services support with over 60+ customers, with about 20% of them being government or quasi-government related, including various municipalities. Moreover, Acorn has a large portfolio of municipal customers in varying sizes, each with their own specific needs, projects, and strategy that Acorn has helped strengthen; this should build confidence in Acorn’s capabilities and expertise to execute on the assertions made throughout the entirety of our proposal. We encourage the Costa Mesa Sanitary District to reach out to the references noted within the proposal, as we are confident the District will receive glowing references about Acorn and its team of highly skilled individuals. Feedback from our clients will add credibility to what we have described within the proposal about our Project Team members, the relevant experiences we have had that are similar to the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, and our capability to handle the workload that would come by adding the Costa Mesa Sanitary District as one of our clients. If the District would like additional references, just ask and we would be happy to provide additional satisfied customers to discuss how Acorn has become a strategic IT partner for their organization! Additionally, please see in Appendix A some letters for recommendation from other municipality customers for reference. SIMILAR EXPERIENCE The following projects are a few highlights while working with some of our local municipal clients in addition to our ongoing on-site and remote helpdesk support: 1.CITY OF MONROVIA Contact: Lauren Vasquez, Assistant City Manager (626) 932-5506 Type of Projects: Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Support lvasquez@ci.monrovia.ca.us Date Performed: 2016 - Current Project Scope: Acorn won a competitive bid project to perform an assessment and provide managed IT support services to the City of Monrovia. Since the City had very little documentation and understanding of their IT systems and infrastructure, Acorn’s initial assignment was to perform a complete assessment to catalogue and evaluate the City’s existing systems. Acorn created and implemented a technology roadmap to replace outdated systems, hardware (including switches, firewalls, and cabling) with more modern and secure infrastructure. Additionally, the City’s more than 50 physical servers were virtualized and consolidated down to 10 physical servers with enhanced security provisions, change management, patch management, image based backup systems, remote monitoring all done with greater redundancy, resiliency, and security in mind. This project was performed over the course of three months, was completed 100% by Acorn and was within budget. The schedule was extended (with City agreement) by approximately 6 weeks due to unforeseen challenges in getting access to the necessary systems and information. 2.CITY OF COVINA COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 7 of 45 Contact: Angel Carrillo, Assistant to the City Manager (626) 384-5600 Type of Project: IT Assessment & Support Services acarrillo@covinaca.gov Date Performed: 2017 - Current Project Scope: The City of Covina including the Police Department was looking for cost savings and better IT support coverage than their previous outsourced provider. After a competitive bid process, Acorn was selected to provide general IT administration services including but not limited to: 24/7/365 remote helpdesk support, network administration, server administration, as well as a full-time on-site IT Specialist. This project started off with a general IT assessment during which time documentation was gathered into a single living document and provided to the in-house IT manager and management staff; interviews were conducted with department liaisons to get a better understanding of each departments’ needs, as well as on-going and future IT related projects. The on-going service is performed 100% by Acorn in tandem with an in-house IT manager. 3.CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA Contact: Lucy Demirjian, Assistant to the City Manager (626) 403-7231 Type of Projects: Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Support ldemirjian@southpasadenaca.gov Date Performed: 2015 - Current Project Scope: Acorn won a competitive bid project to perform an assessment and provide managed IT support services to the City of South Pasadena and Police Department. Since the City had very little documentation and understanding of their IT systems and infrastructure, Acorn’s initial assignment was to perform a complete assessment to catalogue and evaluate the City’s existing systems. Acorn created and implemented a technology roadmap to replace outdated systems, hardware. Acorn outlined recommendations for the virtualization of the City’s servers, moving from more than a dozen physical servers to three physical servers and a SAN environment, a new image-based backup system, and upgraded computer workstations. As part of this overhaul, new policies were implemented for change management, patch management, remote monitoring, as well as a rolling 5-year replacement schedule of workstations. Acorn also provides ongoing IT future planning, budgeting, and documentation. The project was executed on budget, and Acorn surpassed their scheduling commitments by completing work in eleven months. 4.CITY OF LA QUINTA Contact: Gilbert Villalpando, Assistant to City Manager (760) 777-7094 Type of Projects: Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Support gvillalpando@laquintaca.gov Date Performed: 2019 - Current Project Scope: Acorn won a competitive bid project to provide managed IT support services to the City of La Quinta. Since the City had very little documentation and understanding of their IT systems and infrastructure, Acorn’s initial assignment was to perform a complete assessment to catalogue and evaluate the City’s existing systems. Acorn created and implemented a technology roadmap to replace outdated systems, hardware (including servers, firewalls, and computers) with more modern and secure infrastructure. Additionally, the City’s more than 10 physical servers were virtualized and consolidated down to 3 physical servers with enhanced security provisions, change management, patch management, image-based backup systems, remote monitoring all done with greater redundancy, resiliency, and security in mind. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 8 of 45 5.CITY OF MONROVIA - POLICE DEPARTMENT Contact: Alan Sanvictores, Police Chief (626) 256-8056 Type of Project: Assessment, Strategic Planning, Implementation and Support asanvictores@monroviapd.org Date Performed: 2019 - Current Project Scope: The Monrovia Police Department wanted an outside party to analyze the current status of their network and computer systems and receive a comprehensive report detailing vulnerabilities as well as a series of recommendations to improve and advance the current environment. As part of the project, security specialists from Acorn analyzed the current Active Directory, hardware configurations, backup solutions, and computer policies to provide a comprehensive report detailing all known vulnerabilities, as well as a remediation plan to address the issues detected. This one-off project resulted in Acorn winning a contract to extend remote support services to the Monrovia Police Department and implement many of the recommendations that came from the Security Assessment. This project was performed 100% by Acorn over the course of three months and was within budget. The original schedule was extended to accommodate Police staff availability. 6.CITY OF HUNTINGTON BEACH Contact: Oliver Chi, City Manager (310) 663-9837 Type of Projects: Assessment and Strategic Planning oliver.chi@surfcity-hb.org Type of Organization: Government Municipality Date Performed: 2020 Project Scope: Acorn Technology conducted a general organizational assessment of the IS Department for the City of Huntington Beach. To perform the assessment, Acorn reviewed and evaluated the IS Department’s organizational structure, personnel review, infrastructure, management and IT governance. This included but was not limited to: the organizational structure, staffing and resource allocation, processes, service delivery model, associated metrics for performance and budget. To accomplish this, Acorn submitted a set of request for information (RFI) documents to the City to assist in gathering the necessary data to better understand existing workflow, IS staff roles and responsibilities, internal demand for services (helpdesk, systems administration, infrastructure support, applications, etc.), and departmental support needs. In addition, Acorn submitted survey questions for the City to distribute to Department heads and end users to help understand the level of satisfaction with IS services across the city. Lastly, Acorn supplemented the information referenced above with in-person interviews and followed up with remote staff interviews. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 9 of 45 The following are a few highlights while working with some of our private sector clients in addition to our ongoing on-site and remote helpdesk support: 1.ANNENBERG FOUNDATION TRUST AT SUNNYLANDS Contact: John Finkler, Operations Manager (760) 202-2275 Type of Organization: Non-profit Foundation jfinkler@sunnylands.org Type of Project: IT Assessment & Support Services Project: Presidential Retreat Date Performed: 2016 - Current Project Scope: The Sunnylands Estate occasionally hosts the President of the United States and other foreign dignitaries. During such times, Acorn works with agencies like the Office of the President, White House Communications and the Secret Service to ensure that the required systems and network security is in place during the retreat. After getting a list of the requirements, Acorn assesses the current technology, infrastructure, and physical security to ensure all needs are met. On-site technicians are provided by Acorn as requested before, during and after the event takes place. The service is performed 100% by Acorn. 2.SMARTSTOP ASSET MANAGEMENT Contact: Bryan Bowers, IT Director (949) 429-4454 Type of Organization: Publicly-Traded Corporation bbowers@smartstop.com Type of Project: IT Assessment & Support Services Date Performed: 2009 - Current Project Scope: Acorn was asked to assess the customer’s technology readiness for its significant anticipated growth through acquisition. In doing so, Acorn evaluated the customer’s applications, infrastructure, and technology roadmap which facilitated Acorn recommendations. Acorn was also responsible for the implementation and support of the current robust technology service offering that includes but is not limited to: network & server administration, design, and scale out to meet changing business needs, full service remote helpdesk and NOC capable of monitoring all systems and services 24x7x365, supporting more than 130 networks across the United States and Canada, multiple disaster recovery solutions including full hot site replication in an alternate geographic location, multiple threat detection systems in place to prevent compromise, data loss, and exploitation from outside threats and simulated phishing attacks and cybersecurity training for all staff on a regular basis. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 10 of 45 LIST OF SIMILAR SERVICES Below is a list of government, quasi-government, special districts, and other agencies Acorn currently supports that are public information. Upon further request, Acorn can provide a more comprehensive list of its private/confidential clients, if allowed by the client. Alhambra Civic Center Library Alpine Water Users Association Beaumont Cherry Valley Recreation & Park District Boys and Girls Club of Palm Springs Boys and Girls Club of Redlands City of Calimesa City of Covina Hesperia Recreation and Park District Inland Empire Women's Business Center (Riverside & Coachella) LAQ (City of La Quinta) City of Monrovia City of Monrovia Police Department Riverside Community College Moreno Valley Campus Rubidoux Community Services District City of South Pasadena SmartStop Asset Management SmartStop Property Management The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 11 of 45 LIST OF REFERENCES City of Monrovia Lauren Vasquez Assistant City Manager 626-932-5506 lvasquez@ci.monrovia.ca.us City of South Pasadena Lucy Demirjian Assistant to the City Manager 626-403-7231 ldemirjian@southpasadenaca.gov City of La Quinta Gil Villalpando Assistant to the City Manager 760-777-7094 gvillalpando@laquintaca.gov City of Covina Angel Carrillo Assistant to the City Manager (626)384-5415 acarrillo@covinaca.gov Alhambra Civic Center Library Antoinette Morales-Tanner Library Services Manager 626-570-5079 ext. 5616 antoinettem@alhambralibrary.org City of Huntington Beach Oliver Chi City Manager (310)663-9837 oliver.chi@surfcity-hb.org SmartStop Asset Management Bryan Bowers IT Director 949-429-6600 ext.579 bbowers@smartstop.com The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands John Finkler Deputy Director 760-202-2275 jfinkler@sunnylands.org While not requested, and while previously written for Acorn’s submission for other RFPs, Acorn has provided a list of reference letters in Appendix A, that we thought would be helpful in determining the level of service Acorn provides its clients. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 12 of 45 4) SECURITY To start with, it is important to highlight that Acorn’s technical and project management teams have successfully undergone the Department of Justice LiveScan process and have achieved Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) certification to better support its clients and their security needs. Acorn’s CEO, Director of Technology, Director of Security Services and Senior Systems Administrators have all been heavily familiarized with the CJIS policy documents, NIST (National Institute for Security and Technology) Standards especially as it related to network security and compliance. Acorn will evaluate the district's current systems, and policies, to ensure and/or provide recommendations to meet any necessary compliance. These policies and recommendations are most often hand in hand with today’s best practices. Acorn will focus much of its efforts emphasizing security awareness training of the district’s team members, the development of an incident response plan, the implementation of audits, logging, monitoring, detection, and analysis tools, along with enforcing best practice recommendations such as password policy requirements, least access privileges, and proper configuration management/change management, with internal audit procedures. It is these measures that will improve network security and help the district stay within any needed compliance. Acorn will work in tandem with District management to ensure the district meets or exceeds the policy requirements. It is important to remember that it is a joint effort and it may take some time to implement compliance practices, if the District is not already compliant. Isolating critical assets: Acorn understands that critical assets such as email, PII related data, and other sensitive data sources, are the most important to monitor and isolate utilizing the least access privilege concepts. Once Acorn has a better understanding of the needs and what tools and infrastructure are in place, it will make recommendations, if needed, to segment certain parts of the network, and to isolate those critical assets. This would most likely be performed by the use of VLANs and ACLs (Access Control Lists), that would be controlled through the firewall/router and switching infrastructure. Data loss prevention/security tools: Additionally, the use of monitoring tools like EDR (endpoint detection and response tools),and monitoring tools, used for SIEM solution(s), along with data loss prevention solutions, are extremely valuable to monitoring network activity, and to alert when specific actions needs to be taken and/or additional controls may need to be put into place. These tools also allow the district to have the necessary centralized logging of network activity to maintain compliance with the district’s adopted policies and procedures. Where possible, Acorn will recommend the implementation of DMZs for any public facing systems, such as e-mail and web servers. Content Filtering: Acorn will also work with the client to help develop or understand their existing web browsing and content filtering requirements. As needed, Acorn can implement those requirements through a combination of firewall based content filtering along with endpoint software that controls, or further limits, specified web browsing activity. All of this would be done in conjunction with the district’s current policies and procedures, and with specific direction from department decision makers. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 13 of 45 Email: With regard to email, Acorn would recommend limiting and securing access as much as possible, where possible the implementation of MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and VPN (Virtual Private Networks), should be used, additionally to the degree possible, Active Sync, OWA (Outlook Web Access), should be limited on a per user basis or through MFA and/or VPN access. For the remote access to email, and databases, specially those systems that access sensitive or PII related data, Acorn recommends and prefers to implement security measures such as MFA using a fob such as YubiKey and VPNs such as NetMotion. This is common practice in the law enforcement agencies Acorn supports and is inline with CJIS and NIST policies. To ensure the security of the endpoint devices that are remotely accessing the data, Acorn highly recommends the encryption of the mobile devices, and laptops using BitLocker. Smartphone and tablet devices are better secured using mobile device management solutions to better protect the integrity of the data and control access to the data. Acorn is familiar with many Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, including but not limited to: Hexnode, Microsoft’s Intune, Cisco's Meraki MDM, and AirWatch. Acorn supports the mobile device needs for the majority of its customers, including setting up new devices, adding user account info, such as email and work related applications across many mobile OS platforms (iPad, iPhone, Android, Surface, and other tablet and toughbook solutions). Acorn will evaluate the systems that are currently in place, provide ongoing support of those systems that meet required security compliance and make recommendations for improvements where better or more cost effective solutions may be available. Penetration Tests: Acorn Technology highly recommends third-party penetrations tests be performed to initially develop a baseline to see what risks and vulnerabilities may already exist, and then remediation efforts should be performed. A followup penetration test should be performed immediately thereafter to ensure all discovered vulnerabilities have been successfully remediated. This should be the process no less than once per year. While Acorn Technology is able to and has performed numerous penetration tests, risk assessments, and vulnerability assessments, these assessments are not included within this proposal and can be performed under a separate engagement or modification to the Scope of Services. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 14 of 45 5) CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT The relationship with the Project Manager and Account Manager is initially described in Section 2. However, additional information about how Acorn maintains quality, communicative, client relationships can be found below in this section. DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM DETERMINES CLIENT NEEDS. WHAT SPECIFIC PROCESSES ARE FOLLOWED TO RESOLVE CLIENT REQUESTS? Regular Meetings: As mentioned previously, Acorn recommends meeting with District decision makers regularly to better understand the District’s evolving needs as well as discuss ongoing projects, maintain timelines and deliverables as well as receive feedback on the services that Acorn is providing to the District’s end users. At least initially these meetings may be weekly discussions but can become monthly as the District and Acorn develop an ongoing rapport. These meetings provide Acorn with an understanding of the District’s strategic plan as it relates to the use of technology so that solutions designed by Acorn can be developed with the understanding of the District’s future objectives and growth expectations. During the assessment, the Account/Project Manager will meet with the departments and designated staff to begin understanding ongoing and anticipated projects the District hopes to undertake. This will allow Acorn to develop a technology roadmap to replace any outdated systems, servers, workstations, hardware (including switches, firewalls, and cabling) with more modern and secure infrastructure. This includes establishing an ongoing replacement schedule to ease the budgeting and planning process. Additionally, day-to-day needs for support come up on a regular basis. Users are not only empowered to reach out to Acorn directly for support, but they are encouraged to do so. Users can communicate their needs to us via email or telephone, whichever their preference. Telephone support requests are handled real-time. More information is available in section 6 of this proposal. Support requests that come to Acorn via phone or email generate tickets to track the requests, who is assigned to them, what work is performed, how long it took to resolve, and how much time was spent on the ticket. Completed and uncompleted tickets are reviewed daily by Acorn’s Helpdesk Manager, Account Managers and Project Managers to ensure tickets are being handled timely and resolutions are made to resolve client requests. The Helpdesk Manager and the Operations Manager receive helpdesk reports that allow them to more easily monitor outlying issues and tickets that are exceeding the normally expected time to resolution. DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM COMMUNICATES ANY CHANGES TO SYSTEM CONDITIONS TO CLIENTS AND USERS Communication of System Changes: Planned changes to the system which impact conditions, are typically communicated by the Account Manager or Project Manager through the District’s main point of contact. If desired, notices can be made to all users through email and/or calendar invites to make everyone aware of planned changes. Maintenance notices are usually submitted to all appropriate personnel. In the event of an unplanned system change or outage, Acorn’s 24/7/365 monitoring system will alert the Acorn team who will then reach out to the appropriate individuals within the Distract to communicate the outage and next steps/best course of action. These communications typically take place via phone COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 15 of 45 and/or email. Additionally, should the District desire, Acorn can set up email notifications for certain ticket types to help keep District staff up to speed on ticket progress. DESCRIBE HOW MULTIPLE PROJECTS AND REQUESTS ARE PRIORITIZED IF RECEIVED AT THE SAME TIME. Multiple Projects: Acorn strives to provide the fastest response time to its customers. This means that when a customer calls in they are not greeted by an automated phone menu but rather live representatives located in the Riverside office. Acorn’s teams of technicians will quickly troubleshoot in real-time by logging into the computer via our remote management tools. This is a service feature preferred by most of Acorn’s clients as it provides a cost effective alternative to on-site technicians, and the ability to address multiple service requests simultaneously throughout the day. Acorn’s depth and breadth of technical talent allow it to meet the needs for general support requests simultaneously. Similarly, Acorn has multiple project managers, and project technicians to be able to perform/implement multiple projects at the same time. Obviously, Acorn will prioritize based upon the District's determination of critical needs, but it is able to apply multiple sets of resources to meet the District’s project needs as needed. Flexible Resources: Acorn Technology Services’ objective will be to provide expert and prompt support during regular business hours with after-hours staff readily available to provide service during off hours. Technicians will work on projects, maintain inventories, follow current best practices, and keep users informed with open lines of communication regarding projects and open trouble tickets. The District’s IT infrastructure needs regular maintenance to ensure the least amount of service-loss possible, with monitoring, regularly scheduled updates, and dependable backups employed to allow the District to reliably provide their services internally and to the public. Higher tier technicians will be available to maintain and troubleshoot network devices, so that Acorn may successfully support the District's network backbone and security, bringing in additional resources as needed in the face of an outage, security breach, disaster, or for project implementations. DESCRIBE THE FIRM'S EXPERIENCE WITH END USER TRAINING, SPECIFICALLY AS IT RELATES TO USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY TRAININGS. Training: Upon initial set up and as required for new users, Acorn will provide basic training on the proper use of the system and support procedures. Onboarding: Acorn is prepared to meet with District staff to discuss the methodology and approach to implementing IT Support Services for the Costa Mesa Sanitary District. During the previously mentioned assessment and documentation phase in the Methodology Section, Acorn will begin implementing end user training on how to contact our helpdesk and receive 24/7 support. Security Training: Cyber security awareness training involves teaching and enlightening users and employees of the risks and threats around the ever evolving and changing cyber world. Including potential risks of exchanging data whether digitally or verbally with untrustworthy sources. Training also enables employees to be fully aware of the consequences of failing to protect their organization from outside attackers. While Acorn provides on-site and/or remote Cyber Security training, Acorn highly encourages the implementation of a thorough third-party training and testing program (like KnowBe4) that specializes in end-user cyber security awareness training. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 16 of 45 DOES THE FIRM FOLLOW A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS? PLEASE EXPLAIN THE PROCESS FOLLOWED TO HELP CLIENTS PREPARE FOR, ADOPT, AND SUSTAIN THE USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY. Change Management: Acorn does follow a change management process. Below is the framework for change management for the implementation of new technology. 1 – Developing Business Case Justification For all change categories, the Change Coordinator must develop a Business Case Justification, including the requirements of the change that will be attached to the RFC for consideration in the analysis portion of the process. The business case information is documented in the “Change Description” field within the company’s selected technology platform. The following questions are relevant information that should be addressed during development of the business justification: ● The requirements and detailed description of the change. ● Describe the impact the change will make on the business unit’s operation. ● Describe the effect the change may have upon the end user, business operation, and infrastructure, if known. ● Describe the impact on other services that run on the same infrastructure (or on software development projects). ● Describe the effect of not implementing the change. ● Estimate the IT, business and other resources required to implement the change, covering the likely costs, the number and availability of people required, the elapsed time, and any new infrastructure elements required. ● Estimate any additional ongoing resources required if the change is implemented. 2 – Technical Impact Analysis This section describes the criteria a technical reviewer must consider when evaluating the technical impact of a change. The technical impact and risk analysis is documented within the company’s selected technology platform module’s “Impact” fields. After the Change Coordinator reviews, categorizes, and prioritizes the RFC, they will assign a resource depending on the type of change and complexity, to perform a technical analysis of the change. This process is intended to evaluate and validate the technical feasibility, risk and effect a change will have on the production environment and end user productivity. The Technical Approver should consider the following criteria while reviewing any change: ● Evaluate the change plans to gauge the impact and effect of the change during and immediately following the change implementation. ● Review the technical completeness of the change plan, including anticipated assets changed, impact on start-up or shut down of systems, impact on disaster recovery plans, back-up requirements, storage requirements, and operating system requirements. ● Evaluate the technical feasibility of the change and the whole impact of the change in terms of: Performance, Capacity, Security and Operability. ● Validate technical aspects, feasibility, and plan. After the technical impact assessment is complete, the reviewer must assign a technical impact level to the change. 3 – Business Risk and Impact Analysis COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 17 of 45 This section details the potential infrastructure and business risks and impacts associated with a change, and the criteria necessary to assign a risk level to a change. The Change Coordinator works with the business units strongly associated or impacted by the proposed change to conduct a business risk and impact analysis. The business risk and impact analysis are completed when a new change record is created. The business risk and impact process evaluate the impact of the change as it relates to the ability of the company to conduct business. The key objective is to confirm that the change is consistent with current business objectives. The following points should be considered while performing the business risk and impact assessment: ● Evaluate business risk/impact of both doing and not doing the change. ● Analyze timing of the change to resolve any conflicts and minimize impact. ● Ensure all affected parties are aware of the change and understand its impact. ● Determine if the implementation of the change conflicts with the business cycle. ● Ensure current business requirements and objectives are met. When the Change Coordinator analyzes the change, they have the responsibility of initially assigning a risk level for all categories: ● IT Resource Impact ● Implementation Complexity ● Duration of Change ● Security ● Service Level Impact 4 – Developing the Back-Out plan Development of the back-out plan is essential to ensuring effective recovery in the event of a failed change. The back-out plan is primarily based on the technical impact analysis and the implementation plan. 5 – IT Business Unit Manager Review and Approval Following the submission of the new RFC, it will be screened by the IT business unit manager who determines whether to authorize or deny the change based on the information in the new change record. This screening process includes a reality check to ensure that the RFC is appropriate, and to ensure the request is complete. The manager can elect to approve, deny, or request additional information from the change initiator. The Change Initiator is notified of the progress of their request at all stages. 6 – Testing Phase All change categories will undergo some level of testing depending on the complexity of the change. Once the change is built, configured, and integrated in the development environment, the change is moved to the Test/QA environment. This phase focuses on conducting testing and quality assurance to ensure reliability and performance of all components of the organization’s technology infrastructure. The Change Coordinator will oversee the testing function, develop the test plan, and report its findings back to the CAB for voting on whether to advance the change to the next step. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 18 of 45 7 – Conducting the Peer Approval Peer approvals are the last step of the Change Development Phase. Peer approvals are optional for all changes completed by a customer IT business unit. This step ensures that all the technical components and notifications have been completed as required by the Change Advisory Board. This approval can be completed by anyone approved by the IT business unit manager and identified as a Peer Approver in the company’s selected technology platform. Peer approvals are completed using a checklist which is attached to the change record. 8 – Change Approval Phase After a minor, major, or significant change has been correctly prioritized, categorized, and analyzed by the Change Coordinator and been through the Peer Review process, the change must be authorized for implementation. Acorn utilizes Change Management in the form of Change Request Forms that allow the District to select one or more points of contact to be authorized to approve Change Orders or user requests outside of standard desktop support. These can include installation of new applications or access permissions, often requiring approval. HOW DOES THE FIRM DETERMINE CUSTOMER SERVICE SATISFACTION? Acorn believes the best determination of customer satisfaction is through regular communications between the Account Manager and the client, and by simply asking the client how we are performing to see if we are meeting their needs, and if we are doing so timely. In our opinion, there is no substitute for this direct communication and feedback. With that said, we often use other metrics to help quantify this determination, such as time spent per ticket, time to resolution, number of tickets per device, etc. Lastly, when clients are willing to provide glowing references, such as those attached to this proposal, that is one of the best determinations of customer satisfaction. Just ask our existing clients. DOES THE FIRM PRODUCE HELP DESK REPORTS? IF SO, ARE THESE REPORTS PROVIDED TO THE CLIENT AND HOW OFTEN ARE THEY PRODUCED FOR REVIEW? The ability for Acorn to provide status updates, reports, and timekeeping starts with the use of its Ticketing System. This critical function and tool allows Acorn to deliver the requested reports and granular detail on its invoices to the District. Ticketing System: Incoming calls and e-mails become tickets – a trackable electronic paper trail that logs the problem, the steps necessary to reach resolution, and the time spent on the ticket. Once a ticket is created, our team of technicians will work with the user to determine the issue and fix the problem. If the issue requires further diagnosis, it will get escalated to a higher level technician or to on-site support as necessary. Reports can be generated based on tickets, to help discover trends and issues routinely addressed, and can be used to more proactively address client concerns. Reporting Overview: Acorn can offer the District a variety of reporting related to Acorn’s performance and workload. Acorn can provide regular reports as requested by the District to illustrate Acorn’s workload as it relates to support requests, monitoring alerts, maintenance activities and internally generated tickets. Depending on the requested set of information, Acorn can provide data such as ticket quantities, dates, time, time spent, issue type, etc. Additionally, COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 19 of 45 progressive reports can be provided at regular intervals to help keep the District informed about the status of projects, time spent, and next steps to better assist in project management. Ticket Generation & Tracking: Acorn Technology utilizes Autotask as its primary Helpdesk ticket management system. It consists of queues for Helpdesk, lab, and site where tickets are created and queued from the following sources: · Incoming support call · Email sent to Helpdesk@acorntechservices.com · Monitoring (Internal monitoring system) · Internal request All generated tickets are initially maintained and tracked in the Helpdesk queue. The Helpdesk Manager’s responsibility is to monitor the queue and assign resources as necessary to ensure work is handled accurately and timely. Additionally, technicians are instructed to go into the queue as they complete tickets to work on the next ticket within the queue. Call Handling: An incoming support call is answered and logged into Acorn’s comprehensive ticketing system, by one of the onsite technicians. The technician will then work to resolve the caller’s issue. If the District desires, Acorn can implement a policy whereby if the onsite technician is unavailable, the call can be routed to Acorn’s 24/7/365 Helpdesk where an experienced technician can remotely address the user’s needs. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 20 of 45 6) DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES Acorn Technology Services’ objective will be to provide expert and prompt support during the District’s regular business hours with after-hours staff readily available to provide service during off hours. Technicians will work on projects, address support requests, maintain inventories, follow current best practices, and keep users informed with open lines of communication regarding projects and open trouble tickets. The District’s computer infrastructure needs regular maintenance to ensure the least amount of service-loss possible, with monitoring, regularly scheduled updates, and dependable backups employed to allow the District to reliably provide their services internally and to the public. Higher tier technicians will be available to maintain and troubleshoot network devices, so that Acorn may successfully support the District’s network backbone and security, bringing in additional resources as needed in the face of an outage, security breach, disaster, or for project implementations. Below, we have provided a description of our services, inline with the Scope of Services defined within the RFP. We have provided significant content that elaborates greatly on the description of our IT management and support services. Below this section, we have addressed each subsequent bullet point within the RFP under “Description of Services”. INITIAL ASSESSMENT At the start of the District’s contract, Acorn will bring in additional resources to conduct an IT assessment to inventory and review all the system architecture and current processes depending on the amount of information available from the current IT team and the complexity of the environment. From this, Acorn will create a working catalog of all IT assets, process documentation, and critical support information. This document will become a referential source for the customer and the IT support staff as it will contain significant and extremely useful knowledge associated with the customer’s existing system and operation. Information in this catalogue will include but not be limited to: 1. Inventory of the Workstations with the following data: Make/Model, Operating System, Processor, RAM, HDD total/used, recommended replacement schedule, location, and assigned user 2. Inventory of the Servers (physical and virtual): Make/Model, Operating System, Processor, RAM, physical or virtual, primary function, recommended replacement schedule, and other recommendations 3. Inventory of Network Printers/Scanners/Copiers 4. Inventory of Network Equipment: Switches, WAPs, Router(s), Modem(s), UPSs, Storage Device(s), etc. 5. Inventory of Phone System 6. ISP and Connectivity Information 7. Listing of Critical Applications, licensing, requirements, vendor support, main users, etc. 8. Remote Access Documentation: VPN, RDS, etc. 9. Evaluation of Backup System and Disaster Recovery capabilities 10. Evaluation of basic physical and network security 11. Evaluation of Anti-Virus, SPAM and Malware solutions 12. Network Diagram 13. Basic Floorplan with device and system locations COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 21 of 45 During this time, the Account/Project Manager will meet with the departments and designated staff to begin understanding ongoing and anticipated projects the District hopes to undertake. This will allow Acorn to develop a technology roadmap to replace any outdated systems, servers, workstations, hardware (including switches, firewalls, and cabling) with more modern and secure infrastructure. This includes establishing an ongoing replacement schedule to ease the budgeting and planning process. Additionally, on-site and remote support technicians will begin assisting users during the assessment period. During the Project Initiation and introduction, Acorn will want to tour the District, allowing for meet and greet opportunities for the District staff and the Acorn project team to get to know each other. Acorn hopes to achieve a smooth transition and receive any existing documentation and access from the current provider. This will be extremely valuable to getting systems in place on the foundational level to be able to provide support as quickly as possible as well as limiting any downtime between IT providers. Acorn has experience formulating the teams needed to quickly and accurately perform the assessment and onboarding process. This will include the assessment of the District’s system inventory and review of the system architecture as well as current processes. This will allow Acorn to review and document systems, and deploy our documentation and remote access tool. Acorn will do so by bringing forth a team that will include a Project Manager, Account Manager, Lead Senior Technician and Onsite Technician to facilitate the initial onboarding and assessment process. During and after the onboarding, Acorn will provide ongoing support but also support the District in the constant need to improve, implement best practices, maintiman security measures and keep current hardware and software configurations up to date. While this is a very brief explanation, the rest of the proposal sections will get into the specifics on how Acorn will achieve this. Acorn will request any and all current documentation from their incumbent provider and will need the District to assist in facilitating that handoff. This includes confirming administrative credentials as well as additional follow questions. In our experience, the assessment not only allows for the collection and documentation of critical information and services, but it also serves as an excellent transition with the existing IT support staff allowing a smooth hand-off and transition to Acorn’s support team. In our experience, the assessment not only allows for the collection and documentation of critical information and services, but it also serves as an excellent transition with the existing IT support staff allowing a smooth hand-off and transition to Acorn’s support team. Once the inventory of the Costa Mesa Sanitary District’s computer and network technologies are complete, our team will review and evaluate the assets, discover any shortages or surpluses, determine where we can add value towards an area of need, and provide any recommendations as necessary to enhance support, security, or streamlining of operations. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 22 of 45 DESCRIBE THE IT MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT SERVICES OFFERED BY THE FIRM. ARE THERE VARYING SERVICE LEVELS? IF SO, PLEASE OUTLINE THEM AND IDENTIFY THE SERVICE LEVEL RECOMMENDED TO MEET THE NEEDS OUTLINED IN THIS RFP. Acorn provides the same high level of service to all its clients. Acorn does not regularly provide varying service levels as it is important to Acorn that clients receive the highest level of technical and customer service, regardless of time of day, or client type. Acorn believes in an all inclusive approach, without many a la carte or excluded items. Remote Helpdesk Support: A team of technicians are available 24/7/365 to provide timely, professional, and effective remote technical support for the District staff. Acorn is often the single point of contact for all features of IT support including daily desktop support, servers, on-premise/hosted phone systems, wireless networks, cloud services, network security, monitoring of critical systems, as well as server administration responsibilities such as system add/remove/changes, etc. Acorn strives to provide the fastest response time to its customers. This means that when a customer calls in they are not greeted by an automated phone menu but rather live representatives located in the Riverside office. Acorn’s teams of technicians will quickly troubleshoot in real-time by logging into the computer via our remote management tools. This is a service feature preferred by most of Acorn’s clients as it provides a cost effective alternative to on-site technicians, and the ability to address multiple service requests simultaneously throughout the day. The following are examples of how a ticket can be opened with the Acorn helpdesk: 1.A user dials Acorn’s helpdesk phone number; 2.A receptionist answers the call, asking for the user’s name; 3.The user provides necessary information to receptionist; 4.The receptionist passes the relevant information to a technician; 5.The technician takes the call, creates the ticket and assists the user remotely, or may contact an on-site technician should remote hands be required. OR: 1.A user e-mails Acorn’s helpdesk e-mail account, explaining their issue; 2.A ticket is generated with a response being sent to the user letting them know their ticket number; 3.A technician will address the ticket and assists the user remotely, or may contact an on-site technician should on-site assistance be required OR: 1.A user makes contact with the on-site technician and explains their issue; 2.The technician creates a ticket and informs the user of the ticket number; 3.The technician assists the user, making contact with the remote helpdesk as necessary. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 23 of 45 Ticket Resolution: Helpdesk technicians are required to monitor the Helpdesk queue for all non-call generated tickets. Our goal is to minimize downtime and restore service operation as soon as possible. Tickets are handled in FIFO order, by priority with high priority tickets handled first. The Director of Operations may increase priorities of tickets based on severity and user impact or to ensure SLAs are being met. Once a technician is working on an issue (call generated or not), they are required to follow the escalation procedure. Once the issue is resolved (and the user is satisfied), time, work performed and notes are entered into the ticket, and the ticket is closed. On-Site Technical Support Staff: Some organizations have requirements for and warrant on-site technical support staff. To accommodate this need, Acorn can offer both full-time and part-time dedicated on-site technician(s) as one of its technical support options. With that said, Acorn finds that over 95% of all technical support issues can be resolved through remote and non-intrusive access. This approach allows clients to draw on an entire team of technicians to achieve a faster resolution time than would be possible when relying on limited on-site technicians. However, when on-site service is required, the on-site technician is contacted or remote Acorn technicians are dispatched as required. A function of on- site technicians is also to provide lab support. Should a workstation need to be isolated from the main network, or if devices require configuration, the on-site technician may perform the work in the IT offices rather than at a user’s desk - this may include but is not limited to operating system upgrades, application installation, hardware upgrades, and virus or malware removal. In addition, Acorn may alternate the on-site technicians (with approval by the District) in an effort to have a greater number of Acorn staff trained on the District’s systems, thus allowing Acorn to offer more redundant trained staffing support. On-site support can begin at the start of the contract during the assessment period or after the assessment has been performed, whichever the District prefers. Acorn Lab Team: Acorn also maintains a staff of lab technicians that work seven days a week to perform device configurations or troubleshoot issues with computer hardware. The lab technicians scan infected workstations, troubleshoot hardware peripherals, install software on new devices, and perform backup imaging of systems. The remote lab staff at Acorn can also double as site runners who can pick up and deliver hardware to customers, or augment project teams to provide additional tier one level technical support. Lab Process & Repair: When a PC or Server is brought into the on-site lab, before any work or diagnosis is performed, machine(s) is fully backed up. Once the backup image is confirmed, the ticket is reviewed and diagnostics/work is performed. If a hardware failure is diagnosed, the technician will determine if the equipment is under warranty. If the equipment is under warranty, the technician will contact the supporting vendor to arrange repair. If the equipment is not under warranty, the technician will contact the CSR to determine the next course of action. This may include researching and finding a replacement piece of equipment or pulling a spare from on-site inventory. Once work is complete, the ticket is updated with the work performed then audited by a different technician. When configuring new equipment for deployment, a ticket and install sheet are created. The install sheet contains a list of configurations and/or software requirements for the device. A technician checks off the items on the sheet as they are completed. When finished, notes are entered into the ticket and the sheet is audited by another technician. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 24 of 45 General Maintenance: For all current District inventory and any subsequent computers added to the System, Acorn will create and maintain the following systems, and perform the following activities per the following schedule: 1. Apply Windows Update Patches Often compatibility issues arise if Customer software is negatively affected by Windows™ updates. Acorn shall evaluate the updates and if performance is acceptable, shall roll out patches across computers and servers. Roll out should occur within two weeks of the release of an update. Acorn will use its WSUS server or if the District prefers, use the District’s WSUS server to manage and monitor the successful deployment of updates. 2. Maintain Antivirus Definitions and Scan Acorn shall create and maintain a suitable anti-virus strategy, which will include installation and updates of new antivirus definitions and a weekly scan of the entire hard drive. Cost of software, if any, is additional and shall be borne by Customer. Antivirus software shall monitor all servers, client machines, and e-mail. Acorn will use the server-side interface of the customer’s antivirus software along with Continuum to manage and monitor the successful deployment of antivirus definitions and system scans. 3. Maintain Antispyware Definitions and Scan Acorn shall create and maintain a suitable antispyware strategy, which will include installation and updates of new antispyware definitions and a periodic scan of the entire hard drive. Cost of software, if any, is additional and shall be borne by Customer. Anti Spyware software shall monitor all servers and computers. Acorn will use the server side interface of the customer’s antispyware software to manage and monitor the successful deployment of updates, antivirus definitions and system scans. 4. Maintain SPAM control Acorn shall create and maintain a strategy for controlling unsolicited commercial e-mail (SPAM). SPAM control must extend to both local and remote users, and must allow for rescuing messages incorrectly categorized as SPAM. Acorn will use its Barracuda Spam filtering appliances to manage and monitor spam filtering for the customer. 5. Domain Management Acorn Technology can provide domain management for the District’s domains which would include timely renewals and appropriate record management to ensure proper delivery of e-mail and website access. 6. Network Maintenance and Security District servers, computers, software, and other systems are maintained and kept up to date on a regular basis to ensure optimal security and stability. Maintenance is typically scheduled and includes systematically applying Microsoft Windows Updates, Antivirus Definitions and Scans, Antispyware Definitions and Scans, SPAM control, firmware updates, and other software updates. This proactive method helps maintain function of the District’s servers with minimal unplanned service interruptions during normal business hours. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 25 of 45 Firewall Management: Acorn will assess and recommend the implementation of certain security features at the firewall level, such as the following: Intrusion Protection which allows for the automatic scanning and blocking of bot related attacks on the network, often scanning for open ports to gain access to the network. Content Filtering of web traffic on the District network to enforce acceptable use policies and block access to websites containing information or images that are objectionable or unproductive, which also includes known virus and malware sites. Enabling Gateway Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware tools to automatically scans all inbound and outbound traffic for viruses, Trojans, keyloggers and other malware in files across all ports to block them from entering the internal network and causing harm. Additionally, due to the ever evolving cyber security threat landscape, Acorn recommends Geo-IP Filtering/Restricting features to identify and control network traffic going to or coming from specific countries to either protect against attacks from known or suspected origins of threat activity, or to investigate suspicious traffic originating from the network. Acorn recommends locking down access to specific countries or locations where the internal network will need to be accessed from. Network Switches: Acorn will assess the existing security and administration measures in place on the physical networking level and recommend implementing network segmentation and sticky MAC; these security features allow only approved devices to connect to the District’s switch infrastructure. This greatly improves security, reduces and mitigates risk of unapproved access to the District’s network and that networks are segmented properly. Ensuring that a device only has access to the specific network resources it is approved to have access to, i.e. critical systems. This includes both physical switch connections as well as wireless throughout the District. Acorn will review the existing wireless networks and make recommendations as needed. IDENTIFY THE FIRM'S HOURS OF OPERATION. IS AFTER-HOURS SUPPORT AVAILABLE? IF SO, WHAT IS INCLUDED AND HOW ARE AFTER-HOURS SERVICES BILLED? Acorn provides remote helpdesk support 24/7/365, this includes onsite support, as needed. Acorn does not differentiate between normal support and after hours support. Acorn does not charge for weekends or holidays. Acorn does not charge for internal escalations or working with vendors, when related to the scope of services. Acorn does not charge for emergency or disaster recovery when related to the scope of services, exceptions may occur if caused by gross negligence or requests that are outside of the scope of services. IDENTIFY THE AVAILABILITY OF KEY STAFF DURING NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS AND AFTER HOURS. Acorn’s remote helpdesk support is available 24/7/365, including on-site support as needed. Acorn’s on-call staff is available 24/7/365, which includes a Systems Administrator and Account Manager, as needed for emergencies and helpdesk escalations. Acorn’s project management staff and account management staff are regularly available M-F, 7am-6pm, with some exceptions. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 26 of 45 IDENTIFY THE FIRM'S GUARANTEED RESPONSE TIME FOR ALL REQUEST TYPES. IF IT IS DEPENDENT UPON SEVERITY AND TIME OF DAY, DESCRIBE THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING THE RESPONSE TIME. PROVIDE THE FIRM'S AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME FOR AFTER-HOURS ISSUES. Since calls for support requests are almost always handled with a live representative, Acorn’s average response time is normally less than 5 minutes. However, in the rare event of a call back or on-site support is needed: Acorn shall be prepared to provide support for Customer’s System maintenance, including remote access, telephone, and on-site help when necessary, per the following schedule: Response Schedule Telephone callback: Monday - Friday 7am-7pm 30 minutes All other times 60 minutes Remote access assistance from qualified technician logging into Network, computer or server: Monday - Friday 7am-7pm 30 minutes All other times 60 minutes On-Site Service from time of first contact: Monday - Friday (9am-4pm) 4 hours After Hours M-F (4pm-11pm) 6 hours After Hours M-F (6am-9am) 6 hours Weekend & Holiday (6am-11pm) 6 hours All other times As Available DESCRIBE THE PROCESS UTILIZED FOR SCHEDULING DOWN TIME FOR ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. HOW OFTEN IS DOWNTIME ANTICIPATED TO OCCUR? HOW IS DOWN TIME COMMUNICATED TO CLIENTS? Acorn Account Managers work closely with their designated client contacts to schedule planned maintenance windows. Acorn schedules regular maintenance windows on a monthly basis, often two weeks after Microsoft releases its updates. This is generally communicated to clients via regular emails that go out to all points of contact as requested by the client. The client is given the opportunity to approve or reschedule the maintenance window. These windows are used for Microsoft updates, 3rd party application updates, as well as firmware updates. In situations where a zero-day COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 27 of 45 patch is recommended, Acorn Account Managers will reach out to each individual client via their preferred method to schedule the maintenance window at the earliest possible time that is least impactful for the client. If work is needed on server infrastructure or an end user's machine, Acorn can accommodate an after hours schedule, so while the client is closed, Acorn can be working on the systems. After the completion of a maintenance window, Acorn can reach out and notify the client via email, phone or other means. DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM WOULD ASSIST WITH THE DISTRICT'S STRATEGIC PLANNING EFFORTS TO ENSURE THAT THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE RETAINS ITS EFFICIENCY AND RELIABILITY. Planning and Project Management: Acorn will use the documentation generated in the onboarding assessment to develop the IT Roadmap for the District. The road map becomes the basis for all other technical decisions and must become the guiding principles for staffing, application development/selection, infrastructure, and other key strategic decisions. This includes the development of a five year replacement schedule for its computers, servers, and network equipment. It will also lay out the needs for software upgrades and replacements due to end of life and end of service/support timelines. Each one of these recommended replacements will have its own project plan that can be provided to the District for prior approval. These plans include the timeline and assignment of a project manager, technical resource(s) and the necessary hardware and software needed to complete the project. However, this is really just the tip of the iceberg of what Acorn calls its “Strategic Planning and Oversight” efforts. This is further expanded upon below: Acorn will assist with identifying solutions to support District strategic goals. Current and future projects will be reviewed, and Acorn will offer recommended policies, procedures and standards during and after implementation. Acorn will help review proposals related to IT services and assist where possible in negotiations. Service recommendations will be provided as needed to enhance IT services. Assistance will be offered with yearly budget recommendations, identifying software and hardware needs and looking toward upcoming years for better future planning. Project managers will provide management of projects as-needed for IT related projects. This is where the partnership between the Network/Systems Engineers and Account Manager shine. Understanding where the District is going and ensuring the technical infrastructure and organizational structure is in place to support that. Acorn’s team has years of experience with other municipalities and public safety organizations allowing us to be able to forecast changes to ensure solutions are in place to address those needs. Acorn has assessed many organizations containing a combination of in-house, outsourced, and blended organizational technology structures. Acorn has a critical eye toward business processes, user experience, and the potential use cases that are most important. This part of the service provided by Acorn will be the culmination of recommendations to ensure the District is prepared for its technological future. Account Managers work with their clients to analyze and develop their budgets on a no-less than annual basis. Acorn often has a more integral experience with Cities and Police Departments due to the level of engagement it has with its on-going support model. This experience makes Acorn well suited to perform a high-level analysis of the District’s IT costs with a comparison to other public, non-public and public safety organizations. Acorn can assist with procurement, leveraging our relationships with vendors or assisting with purchasing through government agreements already in place, such as Dell and CDWG. Multiple quotes can be provided to find cost effective one-to-one comparisons when looking to purchase hardware, software, licensing and services. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 28 of 45 Inventory & Replacement Schedules: Acorn will maintain a documented inventory of all supported devices paired with their best practice replacement schedule. The Acorn Account Manager will work closely with the District to assist in budgeting for timely and proactive replacements of end of life or failing hardware. PROPOSE A STRATEGY FOR MAJOR APPLICATION UPGRADES. When an application upgrade is determined to be necessary, by either end of life, new functionality requirements, security concerns, or customer preference, Acorn takes the following approach. 1) Work with the application vendor to determine system requirements including hardware, network, bandwidth, data, security, etc. Once the requirements are determined Acorn will work with the district to ensure all the requirements have been put in place. If the requirements are not already available, Acorn will put together the necessary project plan and budget to implement the requirements. 2) Once the system requirements are put in place Acorn will work with the application vendor for the development of the test environment, software installation, application data migration, and necessary configurations. 3) Once the test environment is in place Acorn will work with designated users from the District and the application vendor to test the systems to ensure data integrity and application functionality. 4) Once the district is satisfied with the testing, Acorn will work with the application vendor to perform a complete data migration, shut down access to the old system and provide the necessary users with access to the new system. Acorn will work with the application vendor to provide the District with the necessary user training to know how to use the system as intended and will also be available to the District to troubleshoot typical follow up issues that will need to be dealt with. 5) Acorn will then ensure that the new systems are set up within Acorn's monitoring tools, the data/servers are properly being backed up, the proper network security measures are in place, and the documentation is updated to reflect the new application/systems. 6) Lastly, when the customer deems the old system is no longer needed, Acorn will go through the process of decommissioning the old system and archiving its data in case it’s needed in the future DESCRIBE THE FIRM'S RECOMMENDED DISASTER RECOVERY STRATEGY, AND EXPLAIN HOW THE STRATEGY IS UNIQUE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. System Backup: On-site backup: Acorn recommends and performs automatic backups of entire server images, including operating system, applications, and data so that in the event of a fatal malfunction, the system can be restored either on that original hardware, or on different hardware without requiring reinstallation, thereby minimizing downtime. Depending on the server’s functionality and rate of data change, incremental backups should be taken multiple times per day, but no less than 4 times per day. Not only does this backup allow for full server restoration, but it also allows for granular file level recovery. The retention policy for the backup images can be easily modified to meet the District’s requirements as long as there is sufficient storage capacity available on and off-site. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 29 of 45 Off-site backup: Acorn also recommends having full server images along with incremental images backed up to Acorn’s data center or to one of the District’s other sites as soon as the backup image is completed and verified. Acorn is familiar with and has managed a variety of backup and Disaster recovery software solutions including Veeam. Acorn often recommends and utilizes StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect for server backups to reduce costs as compared to other backup solutions. Disaster Recovery Solution: In addition to backups, Acorn highly recommends the District consider a disaster recovery solution that would meet its desired Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). Acorn can assist the District for the development of an implementation of a disaster recovery plan and solution that meets these objectives. Acorn offers various disaster recovery solutions to help guide an organization in the event of a disaster and to effectively reestablish critical business operations within the shortest possible period of time, with minimal or no loss of data. Solutions range from basic server backups to fully live hot site failover capability. For the District, Acorn will recommend options that would allow for the implementation of a disaster recovery solution that would have a combination of fully live replicated servers in addition to backup images that are “pre-restored” in a manner that could significantly reduce the time to restoration. This solution should be able to utilize existing hardware onhand and could greatly reduce the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) of the District. The restoration process is often built into the backup software solution. DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM DETERMINES WHEN SOFTWARE UPGRADES ARE NECESSARY. Acorn believes regular maintenance updates are critical to the efficiency, security, and reliability of the District's systems, as mentioned earlier in this section. This includes, schedule application upgrades when software vendors determine a piece of software is approaching either end of life, the client determines new or different functionality is required, there are security concerns with the software, or based on client preference. DESCRIBE ANY SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE FIRM (BEYOND THOSE LISTED IN THE SCOPE OF SERVICES) THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO THE DISTRICT, SUCH AS AUDIO VISUAL SERVICES. The District’s RFP has been quite thorough, however, there are some services Acorn provides that are not listed in the RFP. This include: Risk Assessments: Acorn regularly conducts IT Risk Assessments both internal to clients and on behalf of CPA firms for various organizations in and around Southern California. The exposure to IT controls and risk management protocols in place, that are gauged during these assessments, gives us a better insight to what audit firms look for. Our experience allows Acorn to develop our own internal set of questions, processes, and procedures to help ensure a more comprehensive review. In addition, our core competency with years of experience providing professional IT services to customers with our robust and expansive team of individuals allows us to provide industry driven, cost effective solutions and recommendations within a quick turnaround period. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 30 of 45 Risk Assessment of IT controls are typically focused on: ● Physical security infrastructure and environmental controls ● Logical access to data, policies and procedures for obtaining access to data ● Change management process ● Backup and recovery infrastructure, policies and procedures ● Disaster Recovery and business continuity planning ● System development and acquisition ● Network controls ● End user computing, policies and procedures ● Destruction of data ● Organizational security & incident response. The process involves conducting interviews with IT staff and management personnel to review change controls, documentation, policies, and procedures to identify deficiencies and provide recommendations for remediations. Acorn’s risk assessment questions align with NIST 800-30 standards and allow us to gain a more comprehensive approach to practical remediations and identifying gap analysis deficiencies. Acorn will prioritize these findings based on criticality, including an expanded definition of the risk and explanation of the impact to the organization. Vulnerability Scans: As a complimentary service to its Risk Assessments, Acorn performs vulnerability scans for its clients. Acorn utilizes specialized tools to scan the District network, inside and out, to identify technical system weaknesses. This includes a systematic audit of available services, searching for known deficiencies in the network, operating systems, and application layers. We identify the vulnerabilities, share the details with our clients, and suggest specific corrective measures. Recommendations are prepared in a way that enables them to be interpreted and utilized by both the management and technical professionals on your team. Data Center Services: Acorn owns and operates its own data center along with having co-location space within the world renowned Switch facility within Las Vegas NV, which allows customers to take advantage of reduced costs for hosting, off- site disaster recovery solutions, and the utilization of Acorn hosted services such as SPAM filtering and content filtering in the event the District would like these services COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 31 of 45 7) MONITORING DESCRIBE THE TOOLS AND STRATEGIES USED TO MONITOR AND ENSURE THE STABILITY OF IT SYSTEMS. Acorn maintains a 24/7 monitoring system; using a combination of proprietary and third-party monitoring software that are used by Acorn representatives in real-time to monitor our customer’s systems 24/7/365. These tools include but are not limited to Nagios, PagerDuty, Cacti, MRTG, Datto RMM, and other application based email alerts. Acorn monitors health and performance of the network, to ensure servers, network devices, internet, VPN connections, UPS power, circuits, and bandwidth are performing as expected. Acorn sets thresholds for different monitoring parameters based on which alerts are generated, and Acorn’s 24/7 staff will quickly detect, diagnose, and address system outages and performance issues. Additionally, Account Managers and Technical Service Representatives are on call 24/7 and utilize the monitoring system to assure that Customer’s connectivity, latency and usage are within expected and acceptable tolerances. The critical system infrastructure being monitored includes but is not limited to: Internet services, servers, firewalls, switches, UPSs, wireless access points, bandwidth, network traffic, storage devices, etc. DESCRIBE HOW THE RESULTS OF MONITORING WOULD BE REPORTED TO THE DISTRICT. Acorn has monitoring tools in place to provide warnings when systems fall outside of certain thresholds, alerts for predictive failures, and alarms for outages. These systems allow Acorn to be proactive (where possible) to address issues before they become problems and address problems before they become crises. This helps reduce downtime, less interruption to District services, and improved quality of service to the District's constituents. These efforts result in cost savings to the District. These systems are monitored by both people and automated systems with redundancy built in to reduce the likelihood that a critical alert is missed due to human or computer error. The alerts generated from the various monitoring platforms are reported to the District in a variety of ways depending on criticality. If it is critical then Acorn will reach out via telephone to the District point of contact 24/7 based on the District’s direction. Otherwise, alerts, outages, or service interruptions can be communicated via email, specified reports, or in the regularly scheduled meetings with the Account Manager, whichever the District prefers. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 32 of 45 8) DOCUMENTATION AND RECORDS DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM WOULD DOCUMENT ALL MAINTENANCE WORK, SYSTEM PERFORMANCE, AND ANY CHANGES MADE TO DISTRICT SYSTEMS. Acorn will develop and maintain complete documentation on all network information such as system inventory, software licenses, vendors, network diagrams, and system configuration. Acorn documents processes, so the District will be able to work with any of its technicians for assistance and to ensure no critical information is dependent on one or two people. This not only allows for improved service to the District, but prevents the District from ever being “held hostage” by its IT provider. If the District is ever dissatisfied with Acorn, the District has the information necessary to request competitive bids from 3rd party providers with even more comprehensive information than was provided within this proposal. The “how“ part of the documentation is fairly simple. We have baked into our process that all work performed is done with a ticket that describes the work to be done, the time the technician puts into the work, and the specific details the technician performs. This information is always within our ticketing system. That is really just the beginning of the documentation process. Acorn utilizes a documentation platform called IT Glue. This tool is instrumental in providing a repository for Acorn to document all critical systems, important technical details, diagrams, application information, networking equipment, licensing, IP addresses, network configurations, how to articles for tutorials, vendor contact information, expirations for licensing, domains, warranties, security certificates, etc., and so much more! Tickets are created for alerts that are generated from our various monitoring systems. These tickets are then assigned to technicians to investigate the matter and document their findings and the work they performed. This becomes the necessary documentation for the system performance and changes made to the district systems. Lastly, Acorn’s remote monitoring and management tool, Datto RMM, maintains an inventory of all computers and servers under support, the software installed on these systems, and a log of remote access. DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM WOULD RETAIN DOCUMENTATION RELATED TO CONTRACTED WORK. WILL THIS DOCUMENTATION BE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE DISTRICT THROUGHOUT THE CONTRACT PERIOD? The documentation is retained within the ticketing system, the RMM tool and most importantly in IT Glue. The way Acorn “sees it” is that the documentation generated has been paid for by the District, it is about the District’s assets and procedures, it is critical information needed to support the District, therefore, it is the District’s. As such, Acorn will deliver to the District, usually within 90-120 days after the initial onboarding, a complete set of documentation for the district to have. Additionally, Acorn may be able to work out for the district to have remote access to the information in IT Glue as needed. As noted above: This not only allows for improved service to the District, but prevents the District from ever being “held hostage” by its IT provider. If the District is ever dissatisfied with Acorn, the District has the information necessary to request competitive bids from 3rd party providers with even more comprehensive information than was provided within this proposal. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 33 of 45 DESCRIBE HOW THE FIRM WOULD MAINTAIN CONFIDENTIALITY IN STRICT CONFORMANCE WITH CONFIDENTIALITY LAWS AND REGULATIONS. Acorn handles this in a multitude of ways. First off, all employees sign a strict confidentiality agreement before they begin their employment. Secondly all technicians, project managers, and account managers must undergo a indepth Department of Justice background check to ensure there is no history of crime, fraud, or even bad credit that would potentially cause them to be at risk. Additionally, Acorn team members participate in regular training sessions that address things like client confidentiality on a no less than annual basis. Lastly, some of our clients have additional confidentiality agreements that they would like the Acorn team members to sign. This is often done with law enforcement agencies, health care clients, CPA firms, and law firms. If the District would like to have an agreement like this in place, Acorn would be willing to review and work with its team members to agree. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 34 of 45 9)DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS While many firms deliver IT services, Acorn has worked diligently to develop points of distinction that help distinguish us from the competition! Acorn has worked hard to craft different approaches to reduce the roadblocks and challenges to outsourcing the IT function. These efforts center around being proactive, reducing downtime, increasing available expertise to the customer, increasing transparency, and, most importantly, reducing costs. In addition to Acorn’s flexible approach to providing a blend of both on-site and remote support solutions, Acorn offers some unique features to its service model that help reduce costs, reduce downtime, reduce staff time, and increase efficiencies. While some of these were mentioned earlier in the proposal, here is a list of these innovative approaches. 24/7/365 Live Human Support: When you call Acorn, you ALWAYS get a live human answering your call. While Acorn staffs a 24/7/365 team of technicians, not all clients feel the need to pay for the associated costs. Since Acorn’s other clients in law enforcement, healthcare, public safety, (as well as our clientele in Germany) already pay for that extra coverage. Since Acorn is already staffed for this service, Acorn provides this level of service to all of its clients at no extra charge! We know that when an emergency happens or your team is working on some late night deadline and you need IT support, you will be happy the Acorn team is there! System Monitoring: Acorn has monitoring tools in place to provide warnings when systems fall outside of certain thresholds, alerts for predictive failures, and alarms for outages. These systems allow Acorn to be proactive (where possible) to address issues before they become problems and address problems before they become crises. This helps reduce downtime, less interruption to District services, and improved quality of service to the District's constituents. These efforts result in cost savings to the District. These systems are monitored by both people and automated systems with redundancy built in to reduce the likelihood that a critical alert is missed due to human or computer error. The alerts generated from the various monitoring platforms are reported to the District in a variety of ways depending on criticality. If it is critical then Acorn will reach out via telephone to the District point of contact 24/7 based on the District’s direction. Otherwise, alerts, outages, or service interruptions can be communicated via email, specified reports, or in the regularly scheduled meetings with the Account Manager, whichever the District prefers. Documentation: Acorn will develop and maintain complete documentation on all network information such as system inventory, software licenses, vendors, network diagrams, and system configuration. Acorn documents processes, so the District will be able to work with any of its technicians for assistance and to ensure no critical information is dependent on one or two people. This not only allows for improved service to the District, but prevents the District from ever being “held hostage” by its IT provider. If the District is ever dissatisfied with Acorn, the District has the information necessary to request competitive bids from 3rd party providers with far more comprehensive information than was provided within this proposal. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 35 of 45 Procurement Services: Always get the best price Acorn can source...Never a markup on any hardware and take advantage of Acorn’s buying power to procure the best rates. Acorn provides or augments the vendor management and procurement services typically handled by District staff. Acorn leverages its buying power and passes the savings on to its clients. Acorn also works with government cooperative agreements and specific government vendors to ensure the District gets the best price for its hardware and software needs. This frees up District staff time, reduces costs, and reduces the likelihood that a non-technical District staff member ends up procuring the incorrect equipment. Acorn NEVER marks up hardware or software, so the client always gets the best price Acorn can acquire. Depth and Breadth of Talent: Acorn has a team of over 50 amazing people who work daily to meet and exceed the expectations of our clients. By utilizing Acorn’s remote support and not solely depending on the on-site individuals, customers take advantage of the diverse range of talents possessed by Acorn’s technical team. Everything from low voltage cabling and desktop support to more skilled expertise like strategic planning and disaster recovery solution design and implementation are available. This reduces the need for additional third party vendors, thereby reducing District costs. Data Center Services: Acorn owns and operates its own data center along with having co-location space within the world renowned Switch facility within Las Vegas NV, which allows customers to take advantage of reduced costs for hosting, off-site disaster recovery solutions, and the utilization of Acorn hosted services such as SPAM filtering and content filtering in the event the District would like these services. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 36 of 45 10)FEES Acorn Technology Services normally delivers its services and solutions through a flat fee model or, if specifically requested, on an hourly model based on time and materials. Most clients prefer a flat fee that encompasses all of Acorn’s scope of services as opposed to the time and material method, since it allows the client to more easily budget for predictable expenses. This approach assures customers that our objectives are aligned: “when the customer has fewer problems, Acorn’s margins improve;” as opposed to the opposite approach where Acorn makes more money the more problems the customer has. This ensures the incentive to be proactive and preventative is in place. No matter what model best suits the District, there will be no “surprise charges” as any additional charges will require an approval via Change Order. All services will be detailed in the monthly invoice for easy reference. Based on the information provided within the proposal, the initial one-time assessment described within the Proposal, Acorn will provide a team of people to perform the initial assessment, documentation, and provide recommendations, for the flat rate of $6,775. With the combination of the flat fee model and the remote helpdesk, Acorn can effectively support all of the District’s IT needs on a 24/7 basis, take ownership of user-generated trouble tickets as they arise, as well as coordinate more effectively with District staff and outside equipment and software vendors to implement new technologies and see projects through to completion, all at a predictable flat rate. This includes working with vendors for set up, troubleshooting, updating and maintaining supported systems…..all of the items listed within this proposal. If the District commits to a 2 Year Term or 3 Year Term, the monthly fee is discounted as noted in the chart below. Flat Monthly Fee Model Term Monthly Rate 1 Year $4,375/mo 2 Year $4,155/mo 3 Year $3,935/mo The Monthly Fee options were based on the quantities of supported devices as listed below for the systems and infrastructure at the District. With more accurate information and/or should there be an opportunity for consolidation, Acorn will adjust the Monthly Fee accordingly. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 37 of 45 Devices Priced into the Above Flat Monthly Fee Pricing: Quantity Devices ~55 Users 18 Desktop Computers 25 Laptop Computers 5 Servers (Physical) 12 Servers (Virtual) 2 SAN 2 LAN Infrastructure 1 Firewall/Routers 4 Wireless Access Points 6 Switches TBD Virtual Private Network (VPN) 4 Networked Copiers/Printers 30 Mobile Devices and Tablets OPTIONAL FEES: Additional devices can be added to the support agreement at the following rates: MRC per Addition Monthly Rate Increase MRC per Computer $60.00/mo MRC per Server $150.00/mo MRC per Network $150.00/mo MRC per Mobile Device $10.00/mo COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 38 of 45 The following are flat rate charges for other Ad-hoc services: Flat Fee per Addition One-Time Installation Fee Flat Fee per Computer $250.00 Flat Fee per Server $1500.00 The following are hourly rate charges for Ad-hoc services not included within the scope of work: Technician Experience Level Hourly Rate Tier 1 Technician (TSR1) – End User Desktop Support Tier 2 Technician (TSR2) – Systems Administrator Project Managers (PM) – Project Planning and Managing Tier 3 Technician (TSR3) – Network Engineer $90.00/hour $125.00/hour $125.00/hour $145.00/hour Escalation Contractor fees: The rates listed in the chart above are applicable 24/7/365. Acorn does not charge any additional rates for escalation. Fees related to disaster recovery: Unless the District chooses to leverage Acorn’s data center services to facilitate off-site disaster recovery, then there will be no additional charges to support the customer’s existing disaster recovery solution. Fees for emergency response and after-hours work: The rates listed in the chart above are applicable 24/7/365. Acorn does not charge any additional rates for emergency response or after-hours work. COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 39 of 45 APPENDIX A - LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM CHIEF DAVID POVERO AT THE CITY OF COVINA POLICE DEPARTMENT COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 40 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM CHIEF ALAN SANVICTORES AT THE CITY OF MONROVIA POLICE DEPARTMENT COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 41 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM INTERIM CHIEF BRIAN SOLINSKY AT THE CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA POLICE DEPARTMENT COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 42 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM LAUREN VASQUEZ AT THE CITY OF MONROVIA COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 43 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM LUCY DEMIRJIAN AT THE CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 44 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM GILBERT VILLALPANDO AT THE CITY OF LA QUINTA COSTA MESA SANITARY DISTRICT PROPOSAL – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Page 45 of 45 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FROM OLIVER CHI AT THE CITY OF HUNTINGTON BEACH