Mineola, N.Y. -Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi, joined by County officials and executives from a number of the nation's leading technology companies, today officially opened the new state-of-the-art Nassau County Data Center, marking a dramatic step forward for the County, whose information technology needs had been neglected and mismanaged for years. This opening marks the first fully-completed project in the County's comprehensive Real Estate Consolidation Plan.

County Executive Suozzi, center, was happy to meet with John Shepard, left, and Kevin Curran, right, of Lightpath at the Nassau County Data Center Grand Opening

"Today Nassau County, one of the nation's largest municipalities, is finally entering the 21st century with a Data Center that provides the right technological platform for reliability, security and top-notch employee and customer service," said Suozzi. "This facility represents a transformation that has taken several years of perseverance, hard work and coordination among County departments, their staffs and our technology partners. As our technology needs continue to evolve, the Nassau County Data Center has the capability to grow and evolve as well, making this another smart government objective successfully achieved."

"I commend the entire IT team and thank our outside vendors for taking an antiquated and woefully inadequate system and bringing us where we are today," said Commissioner of Information Technology Robert Checca. "This new Data Center allows us the opportunity to continue improving and expanding the service we provide. In addition, it provides far-surpassed communication and more than doubles the capacity of the previous systems and affords us redundancies in the event of a natural or other disaster."

Joining the County Executive at the opening were Chief Administrative Officer John Donnelly, Commissioner Checca and Kevin Curran, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Lightpath, the business telecommunications services division of Cablevision Systems Corporation that is providing the new optical network to Nassau County.

"Nassau County is leveraging both economic and practical benefits of Lightpath Optical Transport Services to improve the way they operate. Most notable is the tremendous increase in reliability and bandwidth that is enabling them to deploy new document imaging and storage area network systems, as well as additional emerging technologies, a combination which enhances the services they are providing to the community at large," said Mr. Curran.

As part of the County's Real Estate Consolidation Plan, efficiencies could be realized by consolidating IT systems into one location. The County's previous data center was insufficient to support all of the County's IT resources and needs. Less than half of the IT resources were located at the main data center and therefore less than half were backed-up by a generator. With the assistance of the Department of Public Works and the Department of Real Estate, as well as Cablevision Lightpath and IBM, the County developed and constructed the new state-of-the-art facility.

The grand opening of the Data Center is part of a multi-phase project created by the Department of Information Technology (IT) to improve the reliability of the County's network, protect critical data and systems and develop a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. With this new technology platform and delivery system, the County expects to introduce a vastly improved internet presence, benefiting both residents and businesses, in the new year.

Consistent with the Administration's long-term planning for all major projects, the new Data Center offers an additional 12,000 square feet to meet the County's growing data storage and processing requirements. The additional space also provides room to consolidate and support of all departmental and agency servers. To ensure reliability, the new facility is equipped with a backup diesel generator and an UPS system. To save data for disaster recovery purposes, the County has also invested in new 14-terabyte Storage Area Network (SAN) architecture, which can provide copies of all production systems data and will significantly improve restoration time by a minimum of 36 hours. And to enhance service to the County's approximately 10,000 employees who utilize the County's network, IT has installed a new Ethernet fiber optics ring that is County-dedicated, dual-routed and self-healing, thereby providing employees with high-speed, reliable and secure access to data and applications.