Overview
Orange County is the local government for ~3.2 million residents — California's third-most-populous county, behind Los Angeles and San Diego — and one of the largest urban-county technology buyers in the state. IT is centralized: OC Information Technology (OCIT) is the county's internal service provider, delivering data-center, applications, client-services, networking, and security across roughly two dozen county agencies under the County Executive Office. OCIT is best understood as a shared-services shop that bills the operating departments it serves (Social Services, Health Care, Sheriff, Assessor, Registrar of Voters, and others) rather than a standalone agency with a large discretionary budget of its own — the program dollars largely sit with those departments.
The county's FY2026-27 Recommended Budget is about $10.5B all-funds ($5.2B general fund), released May 20, 2026, with Board adoption scheduled for June 23, 2026.
For a Dell SLG seller, the combination of a centralized IT buying center, a large stable budget, and an in-flight cloud and ERP modernization (Oracle Fusion for finance/HR, selected May 2025) points the motion toward infrastructure refresh, hybrid-cloud and data-center modernization, and security — routed through the county's central procurement office.
- OC Information Technology (OCIT) is the technology buying center — Acting CIO Ed Althof owns strategy and delivery across ~23 county agencies
- Program/modernization dollars sit with the operating departments (Social Services, Health Care, Sheriff, Assessor, etc.) that OCIT bills via its internal cost-recovery model — map the funded department initiative, not just OCIT's own budget
- Board of Supervisors approves the county budget and major contracts — the gate for large awards
- Fastest compliant paths: OMNIA Partners cooperative agreement (#R240303 via Carahsoft) or California CMAS/LPA schedules through the County Procurement Office (CPO)
Where Dell Can Play
- Re-anchor the OCIT buying center after the June 2026 shake-up: Acting CIO Ed Althof now leads OCIT (former CIO KC Roestenberg moved up to Interim County CEO, CEO Aguirre retiring). Confirm whether the CIO and CEO roles remain acting/interim and rebuild the executive map before forecasting.
- Lead with hybrid-cloud and data-center modernization tied to the Oracle Fusion ERP migration and OCIT's cloud-services track — position Dell ISG, storage, and as-a-service consumption around the surrounding infrastructure.
- Build the security motion with Information Security Director / County Privacy Officer Andrew Alipanah around the county Cybersecurity Program — endpoint, identity, and infrastructure resilience.
- Verify Dell's cooperative coverage (OMNIA Partners, NASPO ValuePoint) and California CMAS/LPA scope so the county can buy without a fresh RFP; register and track solicitations through the County Procurement Office (CPO).
- Time the motion around the June 23, 2026 budget adoption and OCIT's FY priorities (security, high-availability network, systems enhancement) when funding and roadmaps firm up.
Budget & Fiscal
Orange County's FY2026-27 Recommended Budget totals about $10.5B all-funds, of which ~$5.2B is the General Fund and ~$1.3B is General Purpose Revenue covering mandated services. It was released May 20, 2026, with Board of Supervisors adoption scheduled for June 23, 2026. IT spend isn't published as a single public line — it flows through OCIT's internal cost-recovery model and the budgets of the ~23 county agencies it serves, so the buying signal is in department modernization plans rather than a standalone IT appropriation.
- OCIT is funded largely through internal service charges to the county agencies it supports, not a single large general-revenue IT line.
- Program and modernization dollars sit with the operating departments (Social Services, Health Care, Sheriff, Assessor, etc.) — map the funded department initiative, not just OCIT.
Initiatives & Priorities
The county selected Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications in May 2025 to move finance and HR off legacy systems. A multi-year program signaling appetite for cloud modernization and a reference point for the infrastructure, data, and integration work that surrounds a major ERP migration.
Cloud Modernization ERPOCIT has run cloud-migration solicitations and lists Cloud, Mobility, Open Data, and Infrastructure as its core technology strategies. The pitch is hybrid-cloud and data-center modernization that pairs on-prem refresh with cloud workloads — Dell's ISG and as-a-service consumption fit this track.
Cloud Data CenterOCIT runs a formal county Cybersecurity Program — reducing security risk while enabling secure information exchange across county agencies and partners. FY25-26 strategic priorities lead with strengthening system and data security, making security a durable, recurring entry point for endpoint, identity, and infrastructure-security offerings.
CybersecurityOCIT's stated FY25-26 priorities include implementing a high-availability network and enhancing county systems and applications. As a centralized shared-services provider, it carries ongoing server, storage, network, and end-user compute refresh across agencies — a steady lifecycle-and-resilience motion.
Networking RefreshProcurement
Selling to Orange County runs through its central County Procurement Office (CPO), which issues solicitations and manages vendor registration. Two paths shorten the cycle: national cooperative contracts the county has already adopted, and California statewide leveraged agreements the county can buy off without a fresh RFP.
| Vehicle / gate | What it means for Dell |
|---|---|
| County Procurement Office (CPO) | The central buying office for county solicitations, terms, and vendor registration (cpo.oc.gov) — the front door for direct county business. |
| Cooperative contracts (OMNIA Partners, NASPO ValuePoint) | The county leverages national cooperatives — e.g., an OMNIA Partners agreement (#R240303 via Carahsoft) available to agencies within Orange County — to buy off pre-competed awards. Confirm Dell's cooperative coverage and reseller scope. |
| California statewide LPAs (CMAS / Cal eProcure) | California Multiple Award Schedules and other DGS leveraged procurement agreements let the county buy off pre-competed statewide contracts — verify Dell's CMAS/LPA coverage is active and correctly scoped. |
Spend Signals
GovSpend · as of Aug 10, 2026Dell vs. competitors (spend, payee)
Brand footprint — all channels (est.)
Higher of two conservative lenses: product-name match · manufacturer tag. Both undercount — treat as floors.
Top IT categories
Expiring contracts (re-compete)
| Contract | Vendor | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| Airtable User License - Enterprise Scale | Formagrid Inc dba Airtable | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Countywide Asset Management System | Carahsoft Technology Corporation | Aug 31, 2026 |
| Web-based Application for Stormwater Management and Regulatory Compliance | Cloudcompli Inc | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Carahsoft Exterro e-discovery case management tool | Carahsoft Technology Corp | Sep 4, 2026 |
| CARAHSOFT BOX SUBSCRIPTIONS | Carahsoft Technology Corporation | Sep 29, 2026 |
| SOFTWARE ESCROW SERVICES | Escrow London North America Inc | Sep 30, 2026 |
| OC Automated Biometric Identification System Maintenance Services | Morpho USA Inc dba Idemia Identity & Security USA LLC | Jan 26, 2027 |
Open bids / RFPs
| Solicitation | Due |
|---|---|
| Service and Maintenance of ID Bureau Digital Imaging Equipment County of Orange | Aug 10, 2026 |
| Evofinder Extended Warranties County of Orange | Aug 11, 2026 |
| Cloud-Based Medical Transport Logistics Scheduling Software Application County of Orange | Aug 14, 2026 |
| 060-2627-005-IFB Job Order Contracting for Security Electronics and Detention Equipment Services County of Orange | Aug 19, 2026 |
| Job Order Contracting for Structured Cabling and Installation Services County of Orange | Aug 19, 2026 |
| Software Maintenance and Technical Support Services for Trimble Business Center Software County of Orange | Aug 31, 2026 |
- expiringContracts/openBids refreshed 2026-08-10 (corrected from an earlier 2026-08-05 pass) for the window 2026-08-10–2027-02-28 (contracts) and 2026-08-10 onward (bids). A Dell VxRail Support Services contract (endDate 2026-08-08) briefly appeared in the 2026-08-05 pass but had already expired by the corrected date and was dropped, replaced by an AT&T wireless services and equipment contract (endDate 2026-08-11); the Multi Channel Voice Logging Recorder System contract (still active) remains swapped out of the capped 7-entry panel. The prior Street Outreach Data Management System bid (dueDate 2026-08-04) had already closed and was replaced.
- California county fiscal year runs July–June; window reflects PO issue dates 2022-07-01 through 2025-06-30 (FY2023–FY2025).
- Combined vendor-name variants into one entry: ePlus = Eplus Group Inc + Eplus Technology; Dell = Dell Marketing LP + Dell Financial Services LLC.
- Excluded evident false positives: "Insight Investments" (an unrelated financial-services firm, matched "Insight") and "Java Connections" (an IT staffing firm, matched "Connection") from vendor spend; "Staples Contract And Commercial", "Vertiv" (its own Liebert "Precision" cooling line), and "Emc Paradigm Publishing" (a textbook publisher) from the Dell footprint product-text search.
- Figures are estimates: text-matching can include residual false positives (e.g. "Aruba" or "precision" collisions) and source contract dollar amounts are often unpublished; treat every number as a floor.
- Competitor brand figures on this page were recomputed on 2026-08-05 after the same measurement error found in the Dell totals: the earlier method summed per-keyword buckets, so a line item naming two matched terms (e.g. “HPE ProLiant” or “Apple iPad”) was counted twice. Values here come from a single de-duplicated match over the same keyword set and supersede the earlier, overstated totals.
- expiringContracts re-floored 2026-08-10 to a two-week runway (endDate on or after 2026-08-24, up from same-day) per revised guidance for re-compete visibility. Three entries expiring before the new floor (AT&T Wireless Services and Equipment, 2026-08-11; CDW Government Azure Virtual Desktop Licenses, 2026-08-20; Computer Design Center Sharegate Software Subscription, 2026-08-22) were removed and replaced with three IT-relevant contracts newly found in range (Cloudcompli stormwater web application, Carahsoft Box subscriptions, Escrow London software escrow services), keeping the panel at 7.
Power Structure
| Decision-maker | Why they matter |
|---|---|
| KC Roestenberg Interim County Executive Officer (CEO) | Selected by the Board on June 23, 2026 and stepped into the role June 27, 2026, moving up from OCIT CIO after Michelle Aguirre's retirement — a ~40-year county veteran (with the county since 1982) who ran IT, so the top of the administration now has a technology background. Treat as interim pending a permanent CEO recruitment; confirm status before forecasting. |
| Ed Althof Acting Chief Information Officer (OCIT) | Formerly Assistant CIO & CTO; now listed as Acting CIO on OCIT's leadership page after Roestenberg moved to Interim CEO — the central technology relationship for the account. Treat as acting; confirm whether a permanent CIO is named before mapping the org. |
| Andrew Alipanah Director, Information Security (OCIT) | Owns the county Cybersecurity Program — the security buying-center relationship for endpoint, identity, and infrastructure-security plays. (Previously also referenced as County Privacy Officer; verify current scope.) |
| Michelle Aguirre County Executive Officer (CEO) — retiring | Interim CEO since June 2025; retiring effective ~June 27, 2026 after 37 years with the county, replaced by KC Roestenberg on an interim basis. Legacy relationship — rebuild the executive map under the new interim CEO. |
| Board of Supervisors Five-member governing board | Adopts the county budget and approves major contracts; on June 23, 2026 it selected the new interim CEO and was scheduled to adopt the FY2026-27 budget. Vice Chair Katrina Foley led the interim-CEO selection. |
News & Signals
Sources
- OC Information Technology (OCIT)
- OCIT — Our Leadership Team
- OCIT — Orange County Cybersecurity Program
- County of Orange — FY 2026-27 Recommended Budget (press release)
- County of Orange — Michelle Aguirre Appointed County Executive Officer
- MyNewsLA — OC Supervisors Pick KC Roestenberg as New Interim CEO (June 23, 2026)
- OCIT — CIO's Corner ("From the County Acting CIO, Ed Althof")
- Oracle — Orange County Picks Oracle's AI-powered Cloud Applications
- Orange County — County Procurement Office (CPO)