Published date: 26 March 2022

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 12 April 2022, 6pm

Contract summary

Industry

  • Computer equipment and supplies - 30200000

  • IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support - 72000000

Location of contract

North East

Value of contract

£100,000 to £500,000

Procurement reference

BIP678987106

Published date

26 March 2022

Closing date

12 April 2022

Closing time

6pm

Contract start date

1 September 2022

Contract end date

31 August 2025

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

Northumbria University has commenced a cloud and digital modernisation transformation programme of all its IT operations estate (the Programme). We have identified several projects that will run under this programme, one of which is the review of our physical infrastructure and where this could or should be located.

We currently have 2 datacentres (or machine rooms) one of which is located at our Newcastle city campus (Northumberland building) and the other at our Coach Lane campus.

As part of the Programme, we have a vision to migrate some (or eventually all) of our current physical infrastructure to a CoLo datacentre and cloud based suite of services removing the use of both our datacentres. Whilst the primary drivers for this are increased reliability, security and less overhead, this change should also increase our operating efficiency and drive overall better value for money.

As we are a Newcastle based university, we require a CoLo datacentre within 25 miles of Newcastle city centre to ensure staff can visit as and when necessary.
To ensure that we remain compliant with our various obligations, security needs to be considered which may be physical in the form of a cage, but in any event needs to be logical. Any interested supplier is encouraged to consider this in their eventual proposal.

We are interested in receiving proposals from interested suppliers that can meet the above scope covering the following at a minimum in detail:
-Based no further than 25 miles from Newcastle city centre
-Initial requirement is for 13 racks each with a 32amp/7kW redundant power supply
-Contract commit based on 60% of the total power consumption initially
-Connectivity to Azure and AWS
-Connectivity to our Janet network and Newcastle city campus
-Optional cage
-Other required and recommended one-off items (e.g. installation, powerbars, etc.)
-Recommended logical security
-Details of building security measures and controls
-Details of business continuity measures and/or guarantees
-Access arrangements (e.g. 24x7/9x5, signing in, notifications, supervision, etc.)
-Availability, network and other SLAs you offer as well as RPO and RTO times
-Your datacentre accreditations

More information

Links

Additional text

The contracting authority considers that this contract may be suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises (SMEs). However, any selection of tenderers will be based solely on the criteria set out for the procurement.

About the buyer

Contact name

Angelique Borsboom

Address

Sutherland Building
Newcastle
NE1 8ST
UK

Telephone

07429334777

Email

angelique.borsboom@northumbria.ac.uk