Statewide Internet Portal Authority (SIPA)

Appendix C   State of Colorado Data Center Description 

APPENDIX C 

State of Colorado Data Center Description 

In the State of Colorado Executive branch, The Department of Personnel and 

Administration, Division of Information Technologies operates the state Data Center 

located in Lakewood, Colorado.  The Data Center houses the state's mainframe for 

traditional, legacy systems.  It also houses a growing number of servers for customer 

agencies across the state.  Agencies continue to rely heavily on the Data Center to deliver 

traditional database processing, online access, tape and disk storage and printing services.  

The Data Center is housed in a secure facility with 24/7 on site staffing for operations and 

help desk, environmental controls, fire suppressions systems, UPS, generator backup and 

more than adequate space for additional equipment. 

Data Center customers are continuing to move to new technologies, and the Division of 

Information Technologies is partnering with them to help them move in those directions.  

The Data Center is adopting technologies that allow customers to view reports 

electronically, saving printer and paper costs and is assisting them as they convert legacy 

systems to open system applications by hosting and maintaining their servers.  In 

particular, the Data Center is helping customers expand their open systems by developing 

more capability in the area of  virtual servers  and  web enablement  technologies.  An 

example of this is the growing number of servers:  Server hosting at the Data Center has 

grown from 128 servers in FY 2001 2003 to 176 in FY 2002 2003. 

In 2003, the Data Center purchased a new mainframe with 4 times the memory, 

equivalent power for processing legacy applications, and 30% additional power for 

implementing  virtual servers . 

The Departments of Revenue, Labor and Employment, Human Services, and Personnel 

and Administration continue to be the biggest users of the mainframe.  Combined, they 

use 96% of the total service units consumed in FY 2002 2003. 

CPU availability continues to improve as we approach 100% availability: from 98.8% in 

FY 2001 2002 to 99.86% in FY 2002 2003. 

BACKGROUND 

On July 1, 1995, HB 95 1362 merged the departments of Administration and Personnel 

into the new Department of Personnel, General Support Services (GSS).  A year later, 

further legislation eliminated the General Government Computing Center (GGCC) as a 

unique entity by converting four separate units (GGCC, Division of Telecommunications, 

Request for Proposal 10/29/2004 

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