Supply and Installation of a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

The University of Leeds (UoL) is implementing a new Data Centre Strategy (DCS). As part of this it intends to procure and implement a new, modern, converged compute and storage infrastructure that will be hosted across two new fully resilient data centres.

A new strategic approach is needed to provide efficient, effective, flexible, transparent, monitored and consumable compute and storage infrastructure services capable of hosting all UoL IT services. A modern, fit-for-purpose infrastructure platform is required to support University objectives in a way that is sustainable for the future, supports University growth and delivers significant savings.

The current space and infrastructure that support IT at the University is fragmented across numerous locations that contain varying amounts of infrastructure, which we aim to replace with a consolidated, operationally-efficient converged platform that will demand considerably less power, and space at the same time as delivering significant operational and cost benefits.

In general, all applications and services - for teaching, research and corporate - will migrate into a new unified service delivery model. The exceptions being some research servers attached to instrumentation. The new “hybrid cloud” infrastructure platform and service delivery model will be delivered via two main data centres. Approximately 500 servers and 2.4 PB of storage will be replaced with the main migration complete in 18-24 months from date of contract award. Due to the volumes of data involved, we allow an extra 12 months to complete the migration of research data.

The University anticipates commencing the procurement of this opportunity with the publication of an OJEU contract notice in 2016. The University will also be holding a ‘Supplier Event’, to undertake market engagement on the development of the requirement up to the release of the OJEU Contract Notice.

To help the UoL to plan this event, we request organisations wishing to participate in the ‘Supplier Event’ to notify us via our e-tendering portal https://in-tendhost.co.uk/universityofleeds/aspx/Home by noon on the 14th October 2016 for event details.

A call to competition will be made by means of a Contract Notice for the Contract during 2016. Participation or non-participation in the Supplier Day will in no way effect the outcome of any future formal procurement process.