Framework Agreement for Servers, Storage, High Performance Computing & Managed Infrastructure

Description

The Southern Universities Procurement Consortium ("SUPC") is acting as lead organisation on behalf of the universities, further education colleges and other organisations which are members of the consortium ("Members"). SUPC is part of The SUMS Group ("SUPC"). As a centralised procurement authority for universities and further education colleges as well as other not-for-profit and public sector organisations, SUPC develops and manages framework agreements. Members have access to a wide range of professionally tendered agreements compliant with the Procurement Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Procurement Act 2023. By using our agreements, Members can purchase competitively priced goods and services across a variety of commodity areas. The current Servers, Storage and Solutions National Agreement ("SSSNA") put in place by SUPC is due to expire on 31 January 2027. In addition, the initial term of the current High-Performance Computing Framework Agreement ("HPC") put in place by SUPC expires 31 August 2027. The new Framework Agreement for Servers, Storage, High Performance Computing and Managed Infrastructure is the proposed replacement for these existing framework agreements. The scope of the new Framework Agreement will include: - on-premise compute infrastructure solutions - servers - storage platforms - research and high-performance computing solutions - associated implementation and lifecycle services including support - infrastructure as a service and managed service offerings, either on-premise or hosted. The Framework is intended to support: - teaching and learning environments - research computing - enterprise IT services and platforms - hybrid and cloud-integrated architectures - secure and sustainable digital infrastructure. The proposed Framework term is 2 years with 2 optional 12 month extension options (maximum term of 4 years). The proposed Lots for the new Framework are as follows: - Lot 1: Commodity Servers and Components - Lot 2: Enterprise Infrastructure and Storage Solutions - Lot 3: High-Performance Computing and Research Compute Solutions - Lot 4: Managed Infrastructure and Consumption Services The new Framework will introduce a number of improvements, including but not limited to, the ability to procure infrastructure delivered as a service including hosted services rather than ownership.