vFire Maintenance and Support

Tender description

Alemba are the Global owner of the vFire product. Alemba have worked with HSC since 2007 and have an in-depth knowledge of HSC requirements and where necessary have adapted the product to meet service needs in order to ensure ISO20000 audit compliance and guarantee that the product is aligned to ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) industry best practice. Alemba is hosted on HSCNI dedicated Servers offering HSCNI more control over the environment and the data contained within the software product. Lot 1: Alemba are the Global owner of the vFire product. Alemba have worked with HSC since 2007 and have an in-depth knowledge of HSC requirements and where necessary have adapted the product to meet service needs in order to ensure ISO20000 audit compliance and guarantee that the product is aligned to ITIL IT Service Management (ITSM) industry best practice. Alemba is hosted on HSCNI dedicated Servers offering HSCNI more control over the environment and the data contained within the software product. Continuing to have support for the product and the adaptions implemented (e.g. Business Service Transformation Programme adaptions to work with other non-vFire Trusts) will ensure that IT Services will continue to run as effectively as possible. It will also mean that the provision of IT Services can be monitored and reviewed to ensure that HSC customer Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets are met via use of the vFire ITSM toolset. A core ITSM toolset forms a foundation for the move to a NHS Digital Service forecast which is likely to occur over the period of the next four years. This has been highlighted at senior levels of NHS IT Management as a core requirement that HSCNI move onto the one ITSM toolset for all HSCNI Trusts. This is beneficial for a lot of reasons in terms of efficiency, cost effectiveness and simplicity. We intend to extend the existing vFire maintenance and support contract by three years which will lead us to a point at which a new ITSM toolset should be being procured as part of the Digital Shared Services programme. vFire allows BSO ITS and Northern, Southern and South Eastern Trusts to continue to deliver an effective service using a tried and tested product. The withdrawal period for Alemba is 12 months. In two years, we will better informed and will be able to make a much more informed decision on vFire support.