Overview

Background

This project is to manage the procurement of Application Delivery Controllers to replace our existing hardware. The existing service hardware will reach its end of support life in April 2017 and we need to have procured a replacement in good time to ensure we have sufficient lead time to migrate to the new hardware.

The Application Delivery Controllers (load balancers) sit between the user's client system e.g. a web browser and the backend application servers e.g. web servers. They can distribute load coming from multiple clients across multiple replicated backend servers. They can also handle failover if a backend server fails to a stand-by service or, if there is complete failure of the service, to issue a "sorry page" to provide feedback to the user that a service is experiencing problems. 

Scope

Ths is a procurement project to enage with suppliers, gather requirements from stakeholders, isssue an ITT, score responses and award a suppler.

Objectives

Carry out supplier engagement.

Gather requiremetns from stakeholders including the existing service requiremtns and 5+yr growth.

Issue an ITT.

Score responses to the ITT.

Award a supplier contract.

Place an order for equipment on the new contract and carry out acceptance testing.

Produce a migration plan to migrate the existing service to the procured replacement.

Deliverables

Replacement application delivery switches with a support contract to replace our existing service.

A migration plan to migrate the existing service to the procured replacement.

Not in scope for this project is the migration from the existing service to the new hardware platform.

Benefits

The benefit will be the ability to continue to provide a secure load balancer service beyond April 2017 and deliver new infrastructure to provide growth for a further 5+ years and support newer, stronger encryption types and new service types.

Success Criteria

The delivery of resiilient application delivery switch infrastructure capable of handling the existing service requirements and automated failover between sites. The new infasrtructure must be capable of handling existingnetwork bandwidth loads and projected 5+ year growth and provide support for strong encryption. A multi-year support contract should be in place.