Top ICT tenders: Transversal networking contract up for grabs

The envisaged transversal contract includes all networking solutions and related services. (Image source: 123RF)

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It’s a week for big names on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal, with half of the top tenders involving national and provincial departments. The remainder of the featured tenders will also attract the ICT sector’s interest as more complex requirements return to favour.

It is the advertisement of a new transversal contract that takes the top spot, however, as the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) turns its focus to networking solutions.

The envisaged transversal contract includes all networking solutions, including but not limited to ethernet switches (LAN), wireless LAN, routers (WAN, SD-WAN), structured cabling (copper and fibre-optic), network management and peripherals used by the South African government, the agency says.

It also incorporates all related services, including but not limited to: needs analysis, consultation, design, specification, programming (network related), supply and delivery, installation, integration, commissioning, training, support, operations and maintenance, network management, end-of-life services, optimisation, automation and on-site resource.

“The bidder needs to provide solutions that are built on intelligent OSS/BSS applications (FCAPS) to more efficiently run workloads across the SITA network and cloud infrastructure,” the agency specifies.

“All solutions covered in this accreditation must be bundled with an on-site warranty and support/maintenance plan including an option for extending the support period.”

SITA will hold a non-compulsory briefing over Microsoft Teams on 9 July before submissions close on 27 July.

Other tenders that make this week’s top 10:

• SITA is inviting bids for the procurement of VMware enterprise licence products agreement, including upgrades installations, configurations, maintenance and support, for the Department of Water and Sanitation. The department makes use of a virtualised server infrastructure environment, the agency says.

• The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission is calling for proposals for the implementation, maintenance and support of a data masking solution. This is required to achieve comprehensive compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). The objective is to safeguard personally identifiable information (PII) across all external-facing digital platforms, internal operational systems and legacy environments.

• The Presidency requires governance, risk and compliance system software. The system should assist the department in identifying and measuring risk exposures, developing mitigation strategies, monitoring, applying analytic capabilities, and producing various reports and dashboards that managers can apply to daily decision-making. The successful bidder will also be responsible for user training.

• The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition wishes to procure support and maintenance of the B-BBEE Commission’s existing HPE server infrastructure. This will prevent and minimise ICT service disruptions within the environment as there will be both pro-active and re-active maintenance on the environment, which will be conducted by both the B-BBEE Commission and service providers.

• The Eastern Cape Department of Public Works and Infrastructure requires renewal of support and maintenance for its disaster recovery and managed backup services, including licences. The department says the objective of this procurement is to ensure uninterrupted disaster recovery capability; maintain compliance with approved recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives; preserve ICT service continuity capability; and maintain secure off-site cloud replication within South Africa.

• eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality is calling for bids for the wholesaling of excess network capacity on its carrier grade network. The metro explains its communication network infrastructure is more than enough for its current and medium-term needs and includes the fibre-optic network which extends from Craigieburn in the south to Tongaat in the north and Cato Ridge in the west. Approximately 2 800km of optic fibre is installed, it says. The municipality currently wholesales excess network capacity to approximately seven licensed service providers, which in turn sell to their customers. There are currently 19 third-party (commercial premises) that are connected, it adds.

• The municipality also requires corporate network management monitoring maintenance on its carrier-grade communication network infrastructure. It says its core MPLS network has grown substantially over the last few years to keep pace with the expanding fibre-optic footprint. Increased demand for services has led to a requirement to upgrade the Core to a new network platform. The network core currently has Cisco ASR platform, along with the data centre core which consist of Cisco Nexus 7k platform.

• The Department of Health wishes to appoint service providers to support it with the rollout of its bespoke electronic medical record (EMR) digital solution. This electronic digitalisation solution enables the capturing of data during clinical encounters and health interventions linked to a specific user by a designated healthcare service provider at a health establishment within a particular geographic area, it says. The roll-out of the EMR solution will take place in all fixed primary healthcare facilities across eight provinces and include performance of solution roll-out, manage projects, address risks and issues, install hardware, set up and configure software, conduct testing and go-live processes, provide user training, build capacity, manage change, and monitor and improve usage of the EMR digital health solution.

• Eskom is looking for information on commercially available and/or proven technology for re-engineering of the OPC Data Access communication protocol for control systems that are impacted by the Microsoft security changes for systems using the Windows operating system and have the OPC classic architecture infrastructure based on DCOM-based communication. The utility notes OEM support is no longer available as they have exited the business.