New Generation Firewall

Tender description

The Requirements - Summary De Montfort University (DMU) has a requirement for replacement Next Generation Firewall, including ongoing support & maintenance, all as per the Specification (Statement of) Requirements set out in and forming Section Two of this RfQ document. The University welcomes the identification and submission of alternative innovative solution approaches / proposals for consideration and evaluation that meet the University's specific Specification (Statement of) Requirements. All such proposed solutions will need to take account of our Minimum Standards and Essential Requirements in particular and must also meet the University's ICT Solution Requirements standards at Section Five of this RfQ document. Further information surrounding the University's Specification (Statement of) Requirements and responding to these in particular is contained at Section Two of this RfQ; please see that all information and instructions contained therein are fully read and understood before returning your completed RfQ Response. Where submitting more than one alternative proposal for consideration please ensure that all documentation completed and submitted as part of your RfQ Response is clearly titled and referenced to this effect so as to avoid any error or misinterpretation at evaluation stage. Where submitting more than one alternative response for consideration please also be clear to identify the considered relative benefits and potential costs savings of each proposal option / Offer. This procurement represents a mini-competition against the SUPC SLRA Framework Lot 4 Other Software. All RfQ Responses must be submitted in accordance with this Framework. Only those suppliers present on the above mentioned Framework and Lot shall be eligible to bid for this Contract. Bidders must ensure that they respond to all areas of the Specification (Statement of) Requirements, so as to allow for such full consideration and evaluation to take place. De Montfort University are undertaking a procurement exercise to replace our existing Check Point firewall infrastructure and Forcepoint URL filtering solution due to the existing equipment reaching end-of-life. We have a standalone Check Point management platform, currently on version R77.30, running on our VMware infrastructure. We currently have 5 firewall instances, comprising two high availability (HA) clusters and a standalone node. The two HA clusters service our "external" firewalls and our "internal" firewalls and the standalone node ("tenants" firewall) services a separate internet link for guests and commercial organisations located on-site. We have a stretched layer 2/3 network between two data centres located approximately 0.5km apart, linked via 9/125 single mode fibre in our own ducts. Our network infrastructure consists of various Hewlett Packard Enterprise "A-series" switch stacks, configured as virtual switch fabrics using HP's pro...