Postal and telecommunications services

Tender description

Tenders are invited for the provision of Local Connectivity Services (Lot 1) and Inbound and IP Telephony Services (Lot 2). The initial contract period is 24 months; the contract is estimated to commence on 1 February 2018 and expire on 31 January 2020 with option for up to a further 24 month extension. The maximum contract period is therefore 48 months. The supplier is required to specify, design, deliver, maintain and support Local Area Network (LAN) services to customer datacentres and end users. This includes vertical cabling but excludes horizontal cabling to the end users. This requires monitoring of devices to ensure maximum availability, including options to place key devices on a 24x7 support model. The assets are owned by and will remain customer property and must be maintained and patched to maintain original manufacturer’s warranty and support, entirely subject to relevant compliance regimes. All elements within the services, edge, core, distribution and access zones fall under the scope of the requirement – thus, all equipment owned by the customer including but not limited to switches, routers, firewalls, WLAN controllers and access points. The network management team for the customer will retain access rights to amend in scope devices following all relevant change controls, and all devices will remain under customer access control (e.g. TACAS — Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System, etc.). The supplier shall maintain the steady-state of the infrastructure including, but not limited to, minor changes, patching service packs and roll ups to systems implemented as part of this contract, applying security updates to ensure security and PSN compliancy, as part of the core cost of the contract. Under the Cisco Enterprise Campus Architecture 3.0, the supplier shall maintain LAN assets within core, distribution and access networks, and services and infrastructure supporting the datacentre, and hand off points to the Wide Area Network. The supplier shall assist in configuring and managing the customer’s services edge including firewalls, content filtering, and threat prevention, configuring and managing the customer’s remote access services including but not limited to Cisco AnyConnect, Netmotion and Citrix NetScaler infrastructure. The customer requires support and maintenance for the current contact centre solution; supporting approximately 90 operatives. The solution is based upon an on-premises Cisco Contact Centre Express engine having recently been upgraded to version 10.6. Once the Finnesse desktop work has been completed, the engine will be upgraded to 11.5; however, this delivery may not have been completed before the preceding contract expires. The customer requires the supplier to deliver proactive monitoring of key components to ensure maximum availability of inbound telephony services. This infrastructure resides on two new Cisco Business Edition 6000H servers that are located within the Council House in Derby. The customer requires support for the Cisco UCM – Unified Communications Manager v10.6 platform migrating to 11.5 comprising 2 Cisco Business Edition 6000H server voice gateways. The Supplier must supply and configure new assets such as routers and gateways (for example, conversion of ISDN30 trunks (Integrated Services Digital Network) to SIP – Session Initiation Protocol) and provide the procurement of associated licenses for handsets (including future platform upgrades). The supplier must proactively monitor all key components to ensure maximum availability of associated services to the customer. The current installed base units are 69, 79 and 88 series handsets – future handsets may be a mix of SCCP and SIP endpoints. Many users also employ Cisco Jabber soft phones as an alternative to hardware phones. The potential future strategy is to employ cloud services and possible gateway services such as Skype\Team and others. The customer uses the Rightfax product as an efax solution and this must be supported by the supplier. The customer will require the supplier to manage, reconcile and supply appropriate licenses. The supplier shall maintain the in scope infrastructure for the customer, their operating systems and key operating system features to ensure compliancy with all security and PSN requirements. Key to these regimes is the requirement to maintain original manufactures support and warranties of all hardware and software – thus no grey market or white label substitutions will be acceptable. This will form part of the other key server side network infrastructure (such as UCS – Unified Communications System servers supporting UCM and CCX – Contact Centre eXpress). The core service will include CAB Attendance via phone when an initiated RFC change control document is submitted. The service shall include the management and development, including procurement of new devices and licenses, of Cisco Call Manager and the Cisco Contact Centre Express platform.