Educational software package

Tender description

The University is running a tender exercise to appoint a student record system provider to replace the existing solution which is no longer fit for purpose. It is planned that a preferred supplier will be appointed by the end of March 2017 and the new solution will go live by September 2018. With support from Gartner, the University has undertaken an appraisal of the higher education Student Record System market and concluded that the marketplace is beginning to change. The tried-and-tested solutions that have dominated the market for the past 15 years are beginning to be challenged by vendors who are developing new, lower cost, modern, written-for-the-cloud SaaS solutions. In this environment the University is faced with the choice of selecting either a tried-and-tested solution that is based on old technology or selecting a modern SaaS solution that is only just beginning to gain traction in the sector. The University's risk assessment approach has determined that the second option, the procurement of a modern SaaS solution, represents the lowest risk and will deliver the best long-term benefits. Therefore, the University will be appointing a preferred supplier who is able to fully demonstrate that their proposed solution: — Is specifically written for the cloud, taking advantage of the rich features provided by cloud platforms and capable of easily evolving in line with changes in cloud technology; — Provides rapid, automatic elasticity scaling outward and inward commensurate with demand without the need for human intervention; — Is offered following a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand; — Allows broad network access through standard mechanisms that promote use of heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms; — Provides an intuitive and simple user experience regardless of the platform it is consumed on; — Provides a comprehensive and secure application programming interface (API) that allows the University to easily, securely and consistently integrate it with other systems. Before submitting a completed pre-qualification questionnaire suppliers should carefully consider whether their solution meets these requirements as the intensive selection process which will be used by the University will remove non-compliant bids wherever they are identified.