GÉANT intends to award two framework agreements to IT resellers for the delivery, maintenance and support of office IT, servers and datacentre hardware, including relevant software and -services.

The reseller must be able to supply GÉANT with data center equipment of a wide range of brands and at least be able to supply, support and maintain DELL and APPLE equipment as the equipment of this manufacturer is at present heavily used at GÉANT.

The Infrastructure Refresh Project has been commissioned to look at the current infrastructure and refresh the technology. Due to recent incidents with failing hardware and system outages caused by aging hardware which cannot support new software, the project has been scoped in a phased approach.

The first phase of this project will require replacing the current hardware and software with increased resources to accommodate VM growth. There will be enhancements where it is possible to implement, within the phase 1 timeline. There is an opportunity to consolidate datacentres to two (2) sites and enhance the capabilities for high availability and redundancy.

Later phases will include the introduction of other technologies; however, this has not been defined as yet. We are likely to require further hardware and software to support the delivery of these phases.

Infrastructure will be located in LON2 (Slough) and AMS (Amsterdam) datacentres.

The design of the solution will require the procurement of new hardware, software, and equipment as well as support and maintenance.

There is also a requirement to include desktops, laptops and all peripherals as part of this framework as there will be an on-going requirement to refresh user endpoints.

GÉANT requires the reseller to work with through the progressive phases of the project in the coming years.

The tender will focus on procuring equipment used in datacenters, including servers, storage equipment and related components such as for example switches. The contracted suppliers must be able to supply, support and maintain various brands, with an emphasis on Dell products.

Besides the above equipment the procurement of support, maintenance and engineering is part of the scope of the future framework agreement.

Not in scope of this tender is:

• The procurement of packet layer routing equipment, separately tendered by GÉANT in 2023.

• The procurement of hard- and software for the operation of the GÉANT Network (https://network.geant.org/)

• The procurement of software and licenses when this is separately tendered by GÉANT in the future.

The procurement of relevant licenses is temporarily part of the scope of this Datacenter hardware tender.

It is planned that in 2023 / 2024 GÉANT will initiate an European tender for a Software broker. When following that Software broker tender a framework agreement is awarded to a supplier the procurement of licenses may no longer be in scope of this Datacenter equipment tender.