Ekom21 - hereinafter “AG” for short - is the largest municipal IT service company in Hesse and is one of the three largest BSI-certified municipal IT service companies in Germany.
The approximately 500 members in Hesse and other customers nationwide include around 29,000 end users from local governments and other public institutions, such as counties, cities, municipalities, municipal companies, special-purpose associations, institutions, hospitals and homes. In the state sector, Ekom21 serves numerous state associations, ministries and regional presidents.
The in-house data center meets the latest security and technology standards, just as Ekom21 in its entirety has been continuously certified by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) according to ISO 27001 on the basis of basic IT protection since 2009. She also holds the ISO 9001 certificate.
The object of this award procedure is the conclusion of framework agreements without establishing an acceptance obligation to cover procurement requirements of the beneficiaries that cannot yet be planned and specified in detail via the procurement of communication links in a wide variety of forms with regard to availability, Anti-interference speed, transmission rate, signal transit time and quality of service (QoS).
The AG is planning a collective allocation of network connections from around 900 locations (mainly administrative locations) and a corresponding wide area network to connect end customers to the applications hosted by the AG.
Different network concepts and technologies come into consideration for this task (private network such as MPLS, software-defined WAN, etc.). This call for tenders deliberately does not specify any technology. Instead, the most suitable and prepared solution for the future should be used, taking economic efficiency into account.
The solution must be easy for the client to operate (low personnel deployment), a minimum of independent configurability in the area of security guidelines, and must allow a high degree of flexibility (e.g. adding new locations or cloud targets).
In addition to Ekom21, beneficiaries include its association members, the districts, cities, municipalities, administrative communities and special-purpose associations in the federal state of Hesse, each including their legally independent and dependent institutions and associations and other forms of cooperation.
It is intended to conclude a framework agreement with an economic operator.
Over the standard term of the framework agreement (see Section II.2.7) of the announcement), the client estimates a total value of EUR 17,500,000.00 excluding VAT. (Estimated order value per contract year EUR 2,500,000.00 without VAT). The estimated total value is based on the experience of recent years, including estimated additional requirements.
You will find more detailed information on this in the tender documents, in particular the service description.