[Evergreen-general] ILS Conversion Justification Questions

[Gragg, Wendell E]

Hello everyone.  This is my first post here, so if I am posting in the wrong place, please feel free to let me know.

Our library system (3 branches) is considering a move from Polaris to Evergreen and we are going to need to jump through a number of hoops in this process, beginning with the point of my post, justifying the conversion.

What we are looking at is using a hosted solution due to the fact that our city IT department will not allow us to have anything but a Windows based server. Currently, we have a production server, telephony server and a test server, all running Windows and MS SQL.

Currently, we have approximately 204k bib records, around 49k patrons and an annual circ between 500-600k. Only two of our branches circulate.

I have received quotes from three companies (Mobius, Equinox and Emerald) for hosting and migration services and all three would come well under the approximately 40k per year we are paying for Polaris maintenance, so financially it would make sense. What I need is justifications/reasons to convert to an open source ILS from a proprietary system.  What are the advantages, both theoretical and real world and the potential pitfalls?  Has making such a conversion saved you time and effort in administration and operation of the system?

One of our biggest hurdles in getting this approved is going to be the cyber security section of our city IT department.  They are quite aggressive and demanding (oh the stories I could tell...), so I will need to gather information on that too. Any advice there would be greatly appreciated, especially if you can impart any knowledge as to the security aspects of Evergreen and/or the hosting providers I mentioned.

Please feel free to contact me off list if that is your preference.

Thanks in advance,

Wendell

Wendell Gragg, MSIS
Automation Services Supervisor
Bryan+College Station Public Library System
Bryan, TX
979-209-5613

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