Overview:

Provision of Managed Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and associated services.

About the Authority:

Monitor is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health based in London. As the sector regulator for health services in England, our job is to make the health sector work better for patients. We make sure that:

— independent NHS foundation trusts are well-led so that they can deliver quality care on a sustainable basis;

— essential services are maintained if a provider gets into serious difficulties;

— the NHS payment system promotes quality and efficiency;

— procurement, choice and competition operate in the best interests of patients.

Further information on Monitor can be found at www.monitor.gov.uk

Object of the proposed contract:

The proposed contract award is for the provision of managed ICT infrastructure and associated services, including support and disaster recovery services, for a period of five years (with break points at years two and four). Monitor currently owns its ICT infrastructure which is hosted at its headquarter offices in London, SE1 with a replicated server infrastructure at its disaster recovery centre, hosted by In-Technology at Global Switch 1 in London, E14.

The contract provision shall include the management and support of all servers, networking infrastructure and the provision of desktop support and helpdesk services.

Background:

Monitor currently outsources its ICT infrastructure support and directly employs three staff who provide local expertise and a degree of local control and co-ordination of ICT services, and this is proposed to be the ongoing service delivery model, following the award of this contract. Monitor currently has approx. 450 workstations of which approx. 420 are Thin Client devices running Windows 2008 R2 Terminal Services and the rest are PCs running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. It is possible that the number of workstations will increase to approximately 550 during the course of the contract so incremental support would be required to accommodate any such increase.

The successful tenderer will be required to coordinate the provision of services to Monitor by third party IT and application providers.

Requirements:

As Monitor is a knowledge based organisation relying on the high availability of fully operational ICT infrastructure, it has implemented resilient systems and infrastructure. In the event that a hardware issue arises Monitor needs to have the appropriate support engineers on site at either our headquarters or data recovery site within four working hours, in order to expedite restoration of services.

Given the infrastructure outlined above the selected supplier will need to be able to meet the following minimum requirements:

— Microsoft Gold Partner or higher level of accreditation with Microsoft.

— Ability to have suitably qualified engineers on site at our Headquarters and/or our Disaster Recovery site in docklands, within an hour if needed to resolve a severity one issue.

— Experience of running a VMware V Sphere environment.

— Experience of running remote desktop environment.

— Cisco networks, wireless networks and firewall experience in a high availability environment.

The scope of the contract shall include the main infrastructure functions such as service desk, server management, provision, build and support of desktops, security, some database administration, network management, service management, 2nd and 3rd line support and downstream contract management on technologies which include Windows Server, SQL, virtualisation and SAN management.

The business has requirements regarding the need to have more flexible ways of working (e.g. mobile, remote and flexible working) and the possibility of new UK offices may mean the infrastructure will need to encompass an effective and resilient 'network-centric' capability.

Through this procurement Monitor is seeking to:

1. achieve value for money from infrastructure services;

2. enhance the quality of services delivered to users;

3. stimulate innovation in service delivery;

4. ccess the right blend of skills required to support the delivery of ICT services in the future (e.g. business analysis skills, service delivery/contract management);

5. create a longer term strategic partnership with the selected supplier; and

6. maintain and further enhance the security and resilience of the service.