NATO UNCLASSIFIED Acquisition [email protected]Telephone: +32 (0)2 707 8857 Fax: +32 (0)2 707 8770 NCIA/ACQ/2015/926 1 April 2015 NATO UNCLASSIFIED Page 1 of 21 To : Distribution List Subject : Notification of Intent to Invite International Competitive Bids for the Provide Information Technology Modernisation for the NATO Enterprise Project - Work Package 1, (ITM WP1) – Revision Reference(s) : A. AC/4-D/2261 (1996 Edition) B. AC/4-D/2261-ADD2 (1996 Edition) C. AC/4-D(2008)0002-REV1 and AC/4-D(2009)0002, Best Value Procedures D. NCIA/ACQ/2014/7040 dated 21 January 2014(Original NOI) E. NCIA/ACQ/2014/6281 dated 26 August 2014 ( Second NOI) F. AC/4-(PP)D/27263-REV2-ADD2 and BC-D(2014)0024-REV2-ADD1, dated 5 March 2015 G. AC/4-DS(2015)0008 (to be issued) In accordance with References A to C and further to the Notifications of Intent (NOI) issued under References D and E this is a reissued with revised data arising from the Authorization at References F and G. Notice continues to be given of the intent of the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency), as the Host Nation, to issue an Invitation for Bid (IFB) for the Provision Notification of Intent IFB-CO-13703-ITM Provide Information Technology Modernisation (ITM) for the NATO Enterprise € 187 Million (estimated cost) NATO requires resilient ICT solutions at all Command locations which can provide continuity of service through an IT infrastructure which is responsive to all operational requirements as outlined in Capability Package 9C0150. The requirement is to support all of NATO’s business needs through a modernized IT Infrastructure which is more effective and less costly than that which is in place today. Contracting Officer: Mr Graham Hindle E-mail: [email protected]
Notification of Intent to Invite International Competitive Bids for the Provide Information Technology Modernisation for the NATO Enterprise Project - Work Package 1, (ITM WP1) – Revision
Reference(s) : A. AC/4-D/2261 (1996 Edition) B. AC/4-D/2261-ADD2 (1996 Edition) C. AC/4-D(2008)0002-REV1 and AC/4-D(2009)0002, Best Value Procedures D. NCIA/ACQ/2014/7040 dated 21 January 2014(Original NOI) E. NCIA/ACQ/2014/6281 dated 26 August 2014 ( Second NOI) F. AC/4-(PP)D/27263-REV2-ADD2 and BC-D(2014)0024-REV2-ADD1, dated 5 March 2015 G. AC/4-DS(2015)0008 (to be issued)
In accordance with References A to C and further to the Notifications of Intent (NOI) issued under References D and E this is a reissued with revised data arising from the Authorization at References F and G. Notice continues to be given of the intent of the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency), as the Host Nation, to issue an Invitation for Bid (IFB) for the Provision
Notification of Intent IFB-CO-13703-ITM
Provide Information Technology Modernisation (ITM) for the NATO Enterprise
€ 187 Million (estimated cost) NATO requires resilient ICT solutions at all Command locations which can provide continuity of service through an IT infrastructure which is responsive to all operational requirements as outlined in Capability Package 9C0150. The requirement is to support all of NATO’s business needs through a modernized IT Infrastructure which is more effective and less costly than that which is in place today.
of Information Technology Modernisation (ITM) for the NATO Enterprise, Work Package 1.
The ITM project has three main objectives:
a. Improve the operational responsiveness of NATO’s IT Infrastructure by providing increased robustness, performance and resilience.
b. Improve the life-cycle efficiency of NATO’s IT Infrastructure so that infrastructure services can be provided at lowest cost. This will require the Contractor to find the right balance between implementation cost and service operations costs. A large part of the current service operation cost is manpower driven. Therefore, an optimum balance between the level of automation introduced for the service management and control, and the life-cycle cost of supporting and maintaining that automation against the manpower savings that it might bring, needs to be achieved.
c. Implement a service based model of operation and support for NATO’s IT Networks within which Infrastructure as a Service is recognised and practised.
To realise these objectives the Contractor will need to:
a. Refresh, upgrade and standardize NATO’s IT Infrastructure;
b. Create data centres;
c. Centralize and consolidate applications at data centres to offer IT services to the entire NATO Enterprise;
d. Centralize and automate management of NATO’s IT services in order to reduce the cost of Operation and Support;
e. Develop and implement IT Service Continuity and IT Disaster Recovery mechanisms; and
f. Support the purchaser to evolve to a service based life cycle management and support approach.
A summary of the requirements of the project is set forth in Annex A, attached to
this letter.
The reference for the Invitation for Bid is IFB-CO-13703-ITM, and all correspondence concerning the IFB should reference this number.
The IFB is broken down into four sequential increments, referred to as Waves. The intention is to place a single contract for the four Waves, with Wave I as firm/fixed price, and firm fixed price priced options for Waves II to IV. The estimated cost for the services and deliverables included within the basic scope of the intended contract (Wave I to IV) is EUR 117,163,018 Investment, and EUR 69,939,875 for Operations and Support over a life of 5 years.
At this stage the Agency has financial authorisation limited to the investment cost of Wave I and the Operations and support cost of Wave I; i.e., EUR 48,669,613 and EUR 38,591,840. Further funding authorisation will be requested in a timely manner for the following Waves. No partial bidding will be allowed.
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The cahier des charges will include a not-to-exceed cost for bids submitted in response to the IFB of 233.9 MEUR, (125% of the estimated life Cycle scope of Euro 117.163 + 69.939 M Euro), or the equivalent expressed in any other allowed currency calculated in accordance with the currency conversion prescriptions that will be expressed in the IFB.
The NCI Agency will use the International Competitive Bidding (ICB) Procedure, Best Value Procedures. The successful bid pursuant to this IFB will be that bid which is deemed to offer the Best Value for money in accordance with predefined bid evaluation criteria which will be detailed in the IFB as prescribed by the Best Value Procedures. The top level criteria will be : Technical (50%) and Price (50%) and and the second level technical sub criteria of: Engineering (40%), Management (20%), Supportability (20%), Delivery(10%) and Risk (10%).
The formal IFB is planned to be issued in the Q2 2015, with a Bid Closing Date in Q3 2015, and Contract Award in Q2 2016.
Attached (Annex B) is the current bidders list that was compiled as the result of References D and E. Due to the revised schedule and funding the National responsible authorities are kindly requested to review the list and, if appropriate, provide the NCI Agency with any deletions or additional Declarations of Eligibility, not later than 28 April 2015, of qualified and certified firms which are interested in bidding for this project. Any new Declarations of Eligibility should include the following information for each of the nominated firms: Name of the Firm, Telephone number, Fax number, E-mail address and Point of Contact. This information is critical to enable prompt and accurate communication with prospective Bidders and should be sent to the following address:
NATO CI Agency
Boulevard Leopold III 1110 Brussels, Belgium
Attention: Graham Hindle – Senior Contracting Officer
Bidders will be required to declare a bid validity of twelve (12) months from closing date for receipt of bids, supported by a Bid Guarantee of Euro 300,000 (three hundred thousand Euro). Should the selection and award procedure exceed the Bid Closing Date by more than twelve (12) months firms will be requested to voluntarily extend the validity of their bids and Bid Guarantee accordingly. Bidders may decline to do so, withdraw their bid and excuse themselves from the bidding process without penalty.
National authorities are advised that portions of the IFB package will be NATO RESTRICTED. Bidders must therefore have the appropriate personnel clearance in order to be eligible to review the full IFB package.
The successful Bidder will be required to handle and store classified information up to the level of “NATO SECRET”. In addition, contractor personnel working on
The NCI Agency was created on 1 July 2012, through the amalgamation of several existing NATO Agencies, Programme Offices and other entities involved in various aspects of the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) life-cycle. The NCI Agency is chartered to act as NATO’s principal C3 capability deliverer and CIS service provider for the full range of its entitled requirements holders and customers, covering the full life-cycle. The NCI Agency will be, to the maximum extent feasible, the provider of IT-support to NATO business processes (to include provision of IT shared services) to the NATO HQ, the NATO Command Structure and the NATO Agencies (including itself).
Soon after its establishment, the NCI Agency commissioned a study to determine the state of the CIS infrastructure that it inherited, as well as to make recommendations as to how this infrastructure should be modernised, according to industry and government best practice, in order to create a rational foundational layer on which to host all of the services demanded by the NATO user communities. This study determined that:
a. NATO’s fixed IT infrastructure needs to be consolidated and transformed into a single enterprise, service delivery system, responding flexibly and rapidly to NATO’s customers’ demands, charging for its services in a transparent and predictable way, and being benchmarked against outside organisations;
b. It should adopt modern architectural approaches, including virtualisation and cloud technology, and size its operations to match anticipated demands and provide necessary redundancy;
c. It should reduce the diversity of hardware and software solutions being supported in order to gain efficiencies in support costs, sustainability, availability and security;
d. NATO should consolidate its highly decentralised IT infrastructure into three datacentres, while maintaining small local footprints where needed for legacy, latency or other reasons;
e. It should centralise the management of the infrastructure, providing a single overall operations centre, able to manage the services and minimise the staff requirements; and
f. Such a modernisation would lead to a more capable, more highly available, and yet far more cost effective solution;
The overall solution will depend on three ‘pillars’:
a. The technology (systems) to be delivered by the IT Modernisation Work Package Contractors, including the service management and control tools,
b. The organisational structure, including both Agency staff and skills and the Contracted Logistics Support, needed to operate it, and,
c. The processes to be followed in order to provide the required services.
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2 The NCI Agency move from an asset-based to a service-based organisation
The inherited and current NCI Agency business model is based on an asset-optimising paradigm, in which best use is made of the IT assets available and so primarily focuses on the use of resources. Following industry best-practice, the Agency is on a path to transform itself to a process-based organisation (where effort is focused around defining and executing against well-defined and managed processes) and ultimately on to become a service-based organisation in the 2016 timeframe, focused on an end-to-end service life cycle approach, with services being provided according to a standardised and priced service catalogue. The journey does not end in 2016; the NCI Agency organisation and processes will continue to develop and evolve beyond 2016.
Figure 1– The NCI Agency’s journey from an Asset Optimising to Services Based
Organisation
Simultaneously, the NCI Agency is moving to a customer-funded paradigm, where it will charge customers for the services consumed, according to standardised service level agreements (SLA’s). It is adopting a service management framework, based on IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) in accordance with industry best practice.
Key to the enablement of the customer-funded, services-based model is the establishment of a rational underlying IT infrastructure, capable of hosting all user and service management services, in a robust, efficient, flexible and secure way.
3 The Current Situation
The current IT infrastructure solution, as inherited by the NCI Agency, was implemented over many years, in a piecemeal fashion. Rather than being developed in accordance to any considered roadmap, overarching architecture or plan, it evolved, and was driven by local needs. The extant IT infrastructure has been procured at different times, from separate budgets, under separate contracts managed by a variety of different nations and NATO Agencies.
The Agency is moving from here
To Here
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Three major funding mechanisms have been exploited to create the current situation: the Civil Budget responsible for the NATO HQ, the NATO Security Investment Programme (NSIP) providing capital for NATO Command Structure (NCS), and the Military Budget (BC) which has provided funds to maintain and in some cases replace equipment. In addition a variety of other funding mechanisms such as customer funding, Joint Funding, etc., have also contributed to the totality of IT systems deployed within NATO. This split in the funding models has led to a chasm in the coherence in the technical solutions, the management of the IT services, the definition of the service levels, etc.
Exacerbating the problem was the system approach adopted, where rather than looking at the problem holistically, each individual capability that was delivered was considered in isolation, and aspired to be as self-contained as possible in order to minimise implementation risk by reducing dependencies. Although steps have been taken in some communities to overcome this issue, today NATO has situations where there are a variety of technical solutions and technologies deployed even within single sites. As a result the infrastructure is locally focused, heterogeneous, difficult and costly to support and maintain, and offers little flexibility at an enterprise level.
This highly localized set of architectures leads to a highly redundant (but not necessarily highly resilient) service support situation where identical services are managed and supported in many locations using different hardware, different software, different processes and different people. The exact services being provided are not well understood, the levels to which the services are operated are ill defined and not measured, and the costs are not understood except at a very high level.
This heterogeneity also acts as a barrier to achieving a pooling of resources across the enterprise as it makes increased use of management automation difficult and prohibitively costly.
Figure 2 below captures the current situation, where CES indicates Core Enterprise Services, including both the infrastructure and the core services such as email, directories, etc..
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Figure 1 : IT posture prior to IT Modernization
As mentioned above, hardware is often dedicated to specific services and hence underutilized. An estimate of the server utilization conducted in August 2012 indicated that the average utilization was only around 9% across the enterprise; however, it was also concluded that the current architecture and implementation made it not feasible to exploit this excess capacity at an enterprise level.
The underlying hardware and software is ageing, leading to ever increasing costs of maintenance. Much of the current infrastructure is obsolescent or obsolete. An estimate made in August 2012 was that by August 2014 65% of hardware in the enterprise would be beyond its normal supportable life and would begin to put an increasing pressure on the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) budgets.
The prevailing local delivery model also means that Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities are local in nature and scope. NATO sites do not currently support each other in disaster situations. Although backups are made, in the case of a major disaster at a site, such as a server room fire, it is not clear if and how long it would take to restore data and services. It is, however, fair to point out that some functional services cope with this at the application level, by replicating data across sites.
The current Information Security posture is also challenging to maintain due to the variety of software installed, differences in software versions, and the complications this introduces it is difficult to ensure that all the latest security patches are applied consistently.
4 The Future: ITM
IT Modernization will deliver a private, on premises cloud, providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These services will be used to support all of NATO’s business needs for static elements. The single, resilient, logically integrated but geographically
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dispersed, infrastructure will host all of NATO’s applications supporting static locations, negating the need for individual projects to provide hardware to support their capabilities.
IT Modernisation will transform NATO’s fixed IT infrastructure into a modernized single enterprise, customer-funded service delivery system, with a common management and operations surveillance layer, limited operating system / hardware combinations, increased levels of virtualization, modern cloud technology, and include appropriate disaster-recovery / survivability considerations. Only through an enterprise approach of this sort can the NCI Agency respond reliably, flexibly and rapidly to NATO customers’ demands, charge for its services in a transparent and predictable way, and be able to benchmark its services against outside organizations. With such an infrastructure in place, the NCI Agency will be able to measure its cost-efficiency, using industry benchmarks, and optimize its infrastructure and processes in order to continually find improvement in cost and quality of the services provided.
Figure 3 illustrates the conceptual future posture, where the Core Enterprise Services (Infrastructure and Core Services) have been abstracted into a common shared layer.
Figure 1- IT posture following IT Modernization
The words that characterize the IT posture NATO will have following IT Modernization are “POOLED” or “SHARED”. Assets will be pooled and available to the users according to priority. Excess capacity can be redirected as needed to satisfy operational demands. Sustainability will be enhanced due to standardization of software, hardware, process and thus also training and logistics needs. Resilience will be provided ‘out of the box’, with data and services being available at multiple points in the network at all times facilitating ‘Disaster Recovery as a Service’.
Pooling is an essential concept of cloud computing. It is the main driver for the adoption of the cloud business model. In NATO today we have processing, storage, etc., capacities at each site that are scaled to the worst case requirement at each site,
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on a functional service by functional service basis. As a result spare capacity cannot be exploited as an enterprise resource. If a site is out of capacity or even a particular functional service within a site is short of storage or other resource, it is usually not possible to leverage excess capacity elsewhere to satisfy the shortfall. Pooling allows the sizing of the infrastructure to be reduced overall, while at the same time facilitating deployment of capacity to the users dynamically, according to the operationally assigned priorities.
Figure 2- The three views of the new infrastructure
Three views of the future infrastructure are illustrated in Figure 4. At the extreme left is the User View of the service. Users should not be interested in how the services are provided, only that they meet their requirements, such as: resiliency, performance, cost, etc. For example, a pilot might come to work in the morning and wish to see the weather forecast for the next 24 hours. The pilot does not need to concern themselves with all of the activities that go on behind the scenes to collect data, enter it into databases, process it, analyse it, store it and produce finished graphics of the forecast; they are only concerned with the finished product and that it satisfies their needs in terms of timeliness, accuracy, and so on. That is the user view of the service; the experience it provides and the benefit it brings to the user..
IT Modernization envisions presenting a single ‘pane of glass’ view to the system administrators. The administrators will be able to manage all the pooled assets in the cloud in a transparent way, not having to worry about locations, the specifics of the hardware brand, etc., and will thus be able to focus on provisioning the assets to meet current priorities and optimise the performance of the services. Assets not in use can be powered down in order to save on energy usage. The measurement tools needed to understand the current status of the infrastructure as well as the tools needed to
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manage the infrastructure in order to be able to provide the services to the user at the agreed service levels constitutes the Administrator View.
Of course underlying these abstract views is the reality of the physical configuration of the hardware; that is, the Physical View. What is important is that neither the users, nor the Service Operations Centre administrators need to be concerned with the Physical View – they can conduct their roles maintaining only their views which are tailored to their needs and abstracted from physical reality in a way that makes it easier for them to conduct their work. Of course at some level, further back in the organisation the physical view is necessary in order to maintain inventories, replace obsolescence, or conduct physical repairs to equipment, planned maintenance, etc., but this is not a level of detail that users or first or even second Level administrators need concern themselves with.
5 Service Provisioning Models
The ITM Project will implement two service provisioning models, namely: NATO-Owned / NATO-Operated (NONO) and Contractor-Owned / Contractor-Operated (COCO).
5.1 NATO-Owned / NATO-Operated (NONO)
Under the NONO service provisioning paradigm, NATO will own the service assets including hardware and software, and will be responsible for its maintenance, supported at the 3rd and 4th level with Contracted Logistics Support, provided by the Contractor. Further, NATO will operate the service and provide the level of support defined in Section 9.
The ITM Contractor provides NATO with operator/maintainer training. These requirements are covered under Section 9.
5.2 Contractor-Owned / Contractor-Operated (COCO)
Under the COCO service provisioning paradigm, the ITM Contractor owns and manages the service assets including hardware and software throughout their life cycle (upgrades and technology refreshes). The ITM Contractor operates the service and provides all levels of support, as defined in Section 7.
The ITM Contractor provides the service level manager and all needed manpower to operate the service within the terms and conditions of the SLA.
All of the ITM capabilities will be provided based on the NONO model, except the Print and Scan services which will be provided based on the COCO model.
6 Scope
6.1 The ITM Project scope is described with the following perspectives:
a. Organisational and Geographic Scope;
b. Functional Scope;
c. Work Packages; and
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d. Project Phasing.
6.2 Organisational and Geographic Scope
The NATO Enterprise, as defined for the purpose of the ITM Contracts, consists of:
a. The NATO Command Structure (NCS);
b. The NATO Headquarters (NATO HQ);
c. The NATO Agencies (NCI Agency, NSPA and STO);
d. NATO Signal Battalions (NSBs);
e. Non-collocated Deployable CIS Module (DCM) Sites; and
f. The NATO training schools (NDC, NCISS, and NSO).
6.3 Functional Scope
The Functional Scope of the ITM Project consists of:
Infrastructure as a Service that offers the backend infrastructure services to provide the user applications at the required service levels based on an efficient service delivery method. Taxonomy for the ITM architectural building blocks has been developed that defines five elements:
Datacentre: key centralised IaaS location where the bulk of computing will take place.
Standard Node: Location with limited amount of computing in support of local user services access.
Enhanced Node: Location with enhanced computing capabilities in order to support legacy applications that are not deemed to be centralise-able for technical or other reasons, to provide a level of graceful degradation should communications be interrupted, or to provide a higher level of user experience. In all cases the delivered capability will still be provisioned and managed centrally, with local support being limited to first level.
Remote Nodes: In some user locations, with a limited number of users(<10), ITM will provision client devices, but all other services will be centrally provisioned.
Service Operations Centre: The NCI Agency will operate two Operations Centres from which it will administer, and operate all of the NCI Agency provisioned C4ISR services. The two Operations Centres will operate in an active-active mode, such that between them they can operate all services on a 24/7 basis, and when needed either can subsume the complete role, administering and operating all NCI Agency provisioned services.
Client Provisioning that will allow NATO applications to be accessed from any approved client appliance form factor from authorised locations by authorised users. This includes the support for user mobility in NATO locations and beyond.
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Service Management and Control that will manage and control the provision and operation of services identified above.
This includes the implementation of the ITIL processes that have been tailored for the Purchaser, and the monitoring to allow the tracking of the achievement of Service Level Targets.
The SMC capability is to be a robust and coherent solution consists of 3 layers as described in Section 14.2, Enterprise SMC, Domain SMC and Element Manager .
6.4 Work Packages
The ITM Project is subdivided into five (5) separately contracted Work Packages (WP), as follows:
WP1 is the subject of this Contract, and covers:
a. Implement IaaS (Integrator Role)
i. ITM implementation and Integration
ii. Application and data migration
b. Service Management and Control (SMC) tools and equipment. - Establishment of Service Operations Centre(s)
c. Implement Client provisioning services (client devices to be provided as Purchaser Furnished Items (PFI) from WP2 (or other means)
d. Printing and scanning (Contractor Owned - Contractor Operated)
WPs 2 to 6 comprise of four additional and separately awarded contracts covering the following:
a. WP2 - Establish a Framework Contract for the Client Devices
b. WP3 – Not assigned
c. WP4 – Expansion of NHQ Datacentre for the Enterprise
d. WP5 – Provide Consultancy Support to NCI Agency
e. WP6 – Modification to the NCIRC FOC infrastructure
The relationship between the WPs is shown in figure 5 and described in Table 1 - Work Packages and their Relationship below.
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Arrow No.
Relationship Description
1 WP5-WP1 WP5 provides consultancy support to the Purchaser with expertise in the design and implementation of cloud, centralised management, and of ITIL processes.
The WP5 Contractor will provide independent advice to the Purchaser required to:
Implement ITM within the NATO environment;
Implement the ITM project scope;
Migrate applications from the old infrastructure to the new; and
Integrate all of the WPs.
2 WP5-WP6
3 WP5-WP2
4 WP5-WP4
5 WP1-WP6 WP1 implementation will need to be coordinated with the implementation of WP6. WP6
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capabilities will need to be scaled to meet the demands of WP1.
6 WP1-WP2 The WP1 design will define the types of client devices needed. WP2 Contractor will then need to deliver those devices at the locations and times required to implement WP1.
7 WP1-WP4 WP1 Contractor will need to implement the 3rd Datacentre based at NHQ. This will require activities under WP4 so that the existing ANWI capability is modified to allow NHQ to become the ITM 3rd Datacentre
Table 1- Work Packages and their Relationship
7 Project Phasing
The ITM Project is divided into four increments known as “Waves”. This SOW addresses all four waves but the initial contract award will be restricted to the scope of Wave 1. Waves 2 to 4 will be priced and evaluated options in the bid, to be optionally exercised by the Purchaser at a later date.
The content of the four waves is described in the following tables:
7.1 Wave 1
No. Site Site Functionality
1 SHAPE (Shape, Belgium) Service Operations Centre (SOC)
