North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium Ltd (NEUPC) is one of six UK Higher Education purchasing consortia established to deliver and manage a wide range of collaborative framework agreements designed to maximise third party expenditure within the higher education sector. NEUPC wishes to develop a national framework agreement to service the requirements of UK Higher Education Institutions and Associate members for the supply of Networking Equipment and Services through a framework for Higher Education Networking equipment and services, for the supply, installation, storage, maintenance, and repair of Networking Equipment and Networking Consultancy provision. This framework will consist of 4 lots to provide a complete provision of network equipment (lot 1), network services (lots 2 and 3) and Consultancy (lot 4).

Provision of Networking Equipment only including Gateways, Routers, Switches, Bridges, Hubs, Repeaters, Multilayer switches, Bridge Routers, Proxy Servers, Firewalls, Network address translator, ISDN terminal adapter, network interface controller, wireless network interface controller, network monitoring systems, CWDM optical platforms, DWDM optical platforms, IP Video Products, IP Security Systems, Wireless Client Adapters and Protocol Converters and Ethernet adaptors. This list is not exhaustive, all wired and wireless networking equipment is included within the remit.

This agreement will be open to universities and their partners regardless of whether or not they are to be defined as contracting authorities for the purpose of the PCR 2015.

It is anticipated that some of the future call off contracts under this framework may be part funded from external streams, including European Union (EU) funding and (ERDF/ESF) and potentially other research bodies. All funding assessed under this framework will be considered compliant for the purposes of external funding by the named participants.

Small to Medium Networking Projects – Up to 1 000 000 GBP in value. Covering any or all aspects of Networking, including equipment, design, storage, implementation, maintenance, training, through to final disposal. This list is not exhaustive.

Large Networking Projects – In excess of 1 million GBP in value. Covering any or all aspects of Networking, including equipment, design, storage, implementation, maintenance, training, through to final disposal. This list is not exhaustive.

Provision of all aspects of networking consultancy from an independent perspective. This lot is not open to suppliers awarded on lots 1-3 to avoid any conflicts of interest.