MONTCALM COUNTY, Mich. — The cost of replacing servers used by Montcalm County Central Dispatch has more than doubled, with the agency's IT company pointing to growing demand for computer memory driven in part by artificial intelligence and data centers.
WATCH: AI boom hits local 911: Montcalm County Central Dispatch facing rising server costs
Logan Bissell, director of the Montcalm County Central Dispatch Authority, said the agency learned just over a year ago that its core servers needed to be replaced.
“I don't think that I realized that the supply and demand issue with memory alone was going to have such an impact on a local municipality,” Bissell said.
Travis Stoliker, an entrepreneur who has worked with data centers for more than two decades, explained that servers play an important role in how dispatch handles its calls.
“Dispatch will record and transcribe all of their calls, and so that is done on a server that lives somewhere,” Stoliker said.
He said those servers rely on two key components: a central processing unit, which handles the computing, and memory.
“And both of those things have astronomically risen in prices because of the big, big boom in AI,” Stoliker said.
When Montcalm County Central Dispatch began looking at the cost of replacing its servers, Bissell said the price continued to climb and fluctuate.
The cost went from about $80,000 in October to $201,000 in May.
“We went from about $80,000 to $201,000 between October and May. Big chunk right? Terrifying,” Bissell said.
Bissell said the agency's IT company, NetSource, based in Saginaw, told them the price increase was a supply-and-demand issue.
“The explanation they gave is that the memory that is required for these servers is also being used throughout all of tech industry,” Bissell said.
Bissell said the most recent quote they received in September for the servers and installation came to around $184,000.
But despite the changing costs, Bissell said replacing the servers is not something the dispatch authority can put off.
“This is the core of what 911 needs. It is what holds all of our information,” Bissell said. “As prices continue to increase with everything, we're going to have to potentially look at different options for funding.”
