MoJ CPP - Azure Automation (Dev_Ops)

Tender description

Summary of the work Our non-production software delivery pipeline needs to be rebuilt on Azure with consistent automation. Expected Contract Length 12 + 12 months Latest start date Tuesday 1 August 2017 Budget Range The anticipated service would comprise a team of suitable skilled automation engineers (DevOps). The guidance day rate MOJ are prepared to pay is not more than £700/day. By exception and at MoJ's sole discretion a degree of latitude may be granted for key roles but suppliers should consider carefully the mix of seniority in their teams. The total Supplier charge will be evaluated as per evaluation criteria %. (Lowest Price/Supplier Price) * 100 and published weighting applied. Why the Work is Being Done CJSCPP is a change programme to enable the CJS and agencies be more efficient and deliver a better service. For the first time, criminal case information will be kept together in one place. The CJSCPP is part of a wider portfolio of change being delivered by HMCTS under the HMCTS Reform Programme, affecting services in all jurisdictions. Problem to Be Solved Our non-production software delivery pipeline needs to be rebuilt on Azure with consistent automation. The pipeline/environments must: >Be built such that they are easily/quickly reproducible. >Be fully automated (basic virtual image management up to and including network/firewall/security management). >Maintain separation between automation code and configuration data. >Reuse/automate the tools, codebase and extant environments adapting/adding to them as necessary. >Support a deployment process which is consistent across all environments. >Use the existing management layer, centralised logging/monitoring and secure build environment. >Enable automated or single-click promotion of releases to Prod. You must provide Agents to deliver as part of the in-house team. Who Are the Users The programme's delivery teams need an automation team that can: >Push the programme's existing projects through the entire pipeline, from initial code merge, through continuous integration to final testing stages. >Promote a successfully tested release to a production environment. >Come up with innovative solutions to meet new challenges as they arrive. >Help create code tests and designs which conform to current pipeline standards. >Maintain and improve current software delivery pipeline The automation engineers with join an existing team Work Already Done The programme has a Software Delivery Lifecycle which provides high level guidance for constructing pipelines. There is automation code (Ansible, Jenkins, Maven) covering most of the components needed for the pipeline. Existing Team There is a team of automation engineers working with the delivery teams and developing/maintaining the current pipeline. They have strong skills in the core automation tools used by the they have significant UK Cloud experience and a minority have significant Azure experience. It is expected that the successful provider will integrate team members into this existing team. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • E1) Microsoft Certified Azure Partner with demonstrable skills in/experience of the creation and automation of scalable environments on UK Cloud and Azure. • E2) Demonstrable skills in/experience of • Linux administration • Ansible • Maven • Jenkins • Postgresql • Artifactory • Zabbix • Elk Stack • Git/Gerrit • E3) Demonstrable skills in/experience in the design & delivery of resilient & highly-available systems • E4) Demonstrable skills in/experience in Infrastructure as Code principles and practices • E5) Demonstrable skills in/experience of DevOps culture and practices • E6) Demonstrable skills in/experience of Containerisation (not part of the current architecture but deemed essential to the new pipeline) • E7) Demonstrable skills in/experience in continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery • E8) Demonstrable skills in/experience in Gitlab or Github or Gerrit or equivalent Git workflow framework • E9) Demonstrable skills in/experience in Agile (Scrum/Kanban) practices - The team will be expected to manage its own work in sprints and align them with the programme roadmap. • WEIGHTING:- E1=20 E2=20 E3=9 E4=4 E5=10 E6=9 E7=4 E8=4 E9=4 Nice to Haves • N1) Demonstrable skills in/experience of Red Hat 7 • N2) Demonstrable skills in/experience of Artemis MQ or equivalent message queue technology • N3) Demonstrable skills in/experience of of Docker • N4) Demonstrable skills in/experience of OpenStack • WEIGHTING: N1=4 | N2=4 | N3=4 | N4=4 Work Location Primarily Southern House, Wellesley Grove Croydon CR9 1WW and occasionally Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge Road London SE1 9HS Working Arrangments The supplier’s team will initially be required to work onsite at the base location working a five (5) day week. The Service is being delivered against the GDS Service Manual (e.g. agile delivery aligned to scrum methodology). For any work performed at a location different to that of the Base location/London (outside M25), all reasonable travel and expenses costs shall be met in accordance with the rates set out in the MoJ travel and subsistence policy. Expenses will require prior approval from HMCTS before being reimbursed. Statements of Work will be issued for project phases and typically cover 3-6 months Security Clearance All supplier resources must Baseline Personnel Security Check (BPSS) clearance which must be dated within three months of the start date. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-baseline-personnel-security-standardError! Hyperlink reference not valid.for further guidance. Some roles may require SC security clearance. Additional T&Cs Any expenses shall be submitted in line with the Ministry of Justice standard Travel and Subsistence policy and agreed in advance of expenditure. Suppliers shall provide transparency to the Buyer on the rates paid to resources and any third parties in the supply chain. The successful bidder will be a Microsoft Certified Azure Partner No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • R1) The pipeline must be delivered within 8 weeks. Provide a description of the size & make-up of the team you would provide including roles & CV's for team members. • R2) Detail your proposed delivery methodology including indicative activities & timelines to meet the required delivery point. • R3) Demonstrate a robust and comprehensive approach to sourcing, selection and onboarding resource. • R4) Describe how you would liaise with and support the existing Delivery Manager. • R5) Provide a case study for a comparable project your company/team has delivered on Azure/other cloud platform and UKCloud. Clearly detail key transferrable skills and techniques. • R6) Describe the largest project your company/team has delivered on Azure or UK Cloud. • R7) Explain what value you think containerisation could add to the pipeline and how it would be best used. • R8) Describe your company's/team's approach to Infrastructure as Code. Explain the workflows, the approaches to version control and testing. • R9) What do you see as the biggest delivery challenges and risks to delivery • R10) Describe how you would manage the handover of the delivered pipeline automation to the in-house team. Include any training elements necessary. • WEIGHTING:- R1=15 R2=25 R3=5 R4=5 R5=5 R6=2 R7=2 R8=2 R9=2 R10=2 Cultural Fit Criteria • C1) Describe your company's/team's perception of DevOps culture and practice. • C2) Describe your company's/teams experience with and approach to Agile development. • C3) Describe how you would work with multiple multi-vendor teams on a project of this scale. • WEIGHTING C1=6|C2=2|C3=2 Payment Approach Time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 65% Cultural fit 10% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers 1. The pipeline must be delivered within 8 weeks can the pipeline be shared with potential suppliers? The pipeline is currently comprised of the 8 week remediation exercise to bring non prod environments into line with prod. There are no restrictions on who that information is shared with. 2. Has the role been assessed regarding the IR35 legislation please ? Our working assumption is that these roles will be outside of IR35. Further advice will follow as it becomes available. We note that the view outlined above does not represent a definitive position at this point. 3. We notice that both the essential and nice-to-have questions include a weighting 'question': WEIGHTING: E1=20 E2=20 E3=9 E4=4 E5=10 E6=9 E7=4 E8=4 E9=4 and WEIGHTING: N1=4 | N2=4 | N3=4 | N4=4. The response to the essential question is mandatory. How would you like us to respond to these weighting questions? For this line, we would suggest simply replying, 'Noted' or similar where the portal requires a mandatory response. 4. The total weightings add up to 200. Could you clarify the respective weightings of Essential Skills, Nice to Have Skills vs the Proposal Criteria, Cultural Fit and Price please ? The most useful view of this is as short-listing (essential/nice to have) followed by post short-listing (the other categories) therefore as two discrete groups of 100. 5. Please can you clarify - is this a 2 year contract (i.e. 12 + 12 as stated), or is it an 8 week contract as it appears to be from the statement "R1) The pipeline must be delivered within 8 weeks. Provide a description of the size & make-up of the team you would provide including roles & CV's for team members." We have allowed for a max contract term of 12+12 however the specific known engagement is scoped at 8 weeks. A SoW under the contract would be for the 8 week delivery period. The extended contract period is a failsafe to accommodate unforeseen circumstances (technical or environmental) and we would not necessarily expect to use it. Please note that under such exceptional circumstances we would of course engage in some form of mutually agreeable change control. 6. Q1) Please can you confirm, are you looking for experience in deploying in multivendor architectures to both UK Cloud and Azure or experience on both the platform and the migration between the two? A1) We are looking for Azure experience. We have a pipeline in Azure that needs to be rebuilt. If there are any migration requirements the existing team will manage them. 7. Q2) Would you consider some or all of the initial 8 week migration work being done at our offices in Central London with the longer term work being done in Croydon? A2) All work should be done in Croydon. 8. Q3) What, if any, Azure PaaS services are in use or is this a pure IaaS solution? What is the programmes’ design view on the use of Azure PaaS services? (note this is clearly dependent on the location of Production and any desire for cross-cloud portability) A3) This is an IaaS solution. The existing team are building and running the platform. 9. Q5) If a Docker-based solution is desirable is there any preference for container management and orchestration solutions e.g. Swarm, Kubernetes, Mesos, Service Fabric, Fleet and so forth? A5) If Docker is used the something like Kubernetes will be preferred. 10. Q6) How many discrete applications or application services need to be built, packaged and releasable as stand-alone promotable artefacts via the pipeline? A6) There are currently over 100 independant deployable artefacts. 11. Q7) What software programming languages are used in the programme? e.g. Java What build frameworks are in use for each language? e.g. Maven A7) Primarly Java and Node JS. The primary build tool is Maven. 12. The RFP describes “resilient & highly-available systems” – what are the availability (uptime), MTTR/RTO and RPO objectives? This information is not available at this time. Suppliers should record any assumptions made in responding. 13. Our interpretation of your requirements is that you require a service provider to an automation service. We intend to offer this service using direct employees and possibly some contractor resource, all managed by our designated manager. Your requirement for “transparency” around rates seems more geared towards the provision of contingent labour, and not for a service provided in the way suggested. We don’t, therefore, understand the relevance of the transparency request. Can you confirm you are looking for a service as we have described? Confirmed 14. Regarding the requirement to provide tranparency of rates paid to individuals, at what point in the bid process are you seeking this information ? This requirement is a condition of contract more than a tender requirement. The pricing sheet that will be issued to shortlisted suppliers will suffice for the purposes of the tender. 15. Regarding the requirement to provide transparency of rates paid to individuals are you looking for specific rates per person or average rates by resource type placed with you over a period of time ? Generally we would be interested in specific resource rates. This element is a condition of contract and appertains more to the operation of the service post award than to the tender itself. 16. We note the requirement to provide transparency of rates paid to individuals. Are you looking for Salaries paid to Permanent Consultants as well as Day rates to Associate Consultants? We would generally be more interested in associate consultants though this answer should not be taken as a limitation of transparency to just those resources. This element is a condition of contract and appertains more to the operation of the service post award than to the tender itself.