Train Information Services Limited (TISL), trading as National Rail Enquiries (NRE), is a company wholly owned by Train Operating Companies (TOCs) operating within the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) responsible for providing a range of services to TOCs and their customers. The main service is the nationalrail.co.uk online service providing rail journey planner, live train information and comprehensive information about the rail industry including service disruption and station facilities information, special offers and conditions of carriage.
The service receives on average 19mln visits per month across the web and mobile channels with significant short-term peaks driven by travel disruption. Usage of the service is growing with the introduction of dedicated mobile website and smart-phone apps. It is supported by the Online Journey Planner (OJP) and ‘Darwin’ applications.
‘Darwin’ is the source of information that feeds all of NRE’s real time services, providing predictions and actual train movements across the National Rail network in real time. OJP allows users to find the best journey options between any two National Rail locations, based on complex network rules.
In addition, NRE provides other online services, including the ‘Lisa’ real-time virtual assistant, ‘Stations Made Easy’, online TV, mobile services and supports a wide-range of web-services and ‘white-label’ online solutions for partner organisations. NRE’s current estate comprises approximately 200 physical servers provided by dedicated managed hosting solutions. These provide web, application and database hosting.
The current services are typically configured as ‘active/active’ across dual data centres and operate to stringent availability criteria (99.99 % availability) and user response times.
National Rail Enquires aims to procure:
Agile, commodity hosting that is capable of supporting its full range of high volume customer-facing online applications; and.
Service integration and management of NRE’s consolidated hosting estate, including a single point of contact service desk to industry users and third party licencees of its services.
Respondents may submit bids in respect of one or both of the Lots stated in this notice.
The successful supplier will be required to deliver services to a rigorous service level and service credit regime and will be required to demonstrate experience of operating under a similar regime.
NRE envisages that delivery of the majority of the initial requirements will be completed by the successful tenderer(s) prior to the 1.1.2013 with a go-live prior to the 1.4.2013 in order to support the initial application’s transition to live. Thereafter as National Rail Enquiries’ various application contracts are renewed over an expected six to eight month period, they will be moved to the new infrastructure.
The services may also be used to include the hosting needs of other parts of ATOC.