Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2020-08-03
Buyer: The Central Bank of Ireland
Country: IE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72300000
Estimated value: 58042826 EUR

Technical requirements: Award of a 2-year contract for the provision and management of data centre and infrastructure managed services. This includes the following:
• provision and management of two data centre facilities including the uplift of the current secondary data centre to a highly resilient tier 3 facility;
The Central Bank entered into a contract with Global Entserv Solutions Ireland Ltd (then HP Ireland Ltd.) for Data Centre Hosting and Managed Services in 2012. The contract will expire in November 2020. These services are of critical importance for the provision of technology to the Central Bank. In addition to the provision and management of specialist physical facilities used to host the Central Bank’s data centres and technology infrastructure, the contract provides for management of the technologies such as data storage, backups, networks, databases and servers as well as services such as disaster recovery and security.
The Central Bank had been developing a long-term Data Centre strategy, originally planned to be finalised in sufficient time to conduct a new competition before the current contract for the services expires in November 2020. Finalisation of the strategy was impacted by several factors and, as a result, the Central Bank had planned to modify the contract to extend by a short period to allow sufficient time to conduct the new procurement process commencing in Q1 2020. However, due to the Covid-19 outbreak the original plan to issue a tender for managed services/data centre was not achievable due to the urgent need to re-direct the necessary IT resources to activities required to implement and support the full organisation working remotely in immediate timeframes and in a highly secure environment. A sufficient extension to retender and potentially transition to a new provider is not considered within scope of the modification rules in Regulation 72.
Accordingly, a new contract is required on grounds of extreme urgency (pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(c) of S.I. 284/2016) owing to the Covid-19 emergency to ensure continuity of these critical IT services for an interim period until a full competitive procedure can be completed. This includes an urgent requirement to increase the overall resilience of the IT environment by uplifting the current secondary data centre to a highly resilient tier 3 facility. This uplift is required to protect the ability of the Central Bank to continue its critical role and fulfil its public interest mandate, particularly in circumstances where up to c.2000 staff are working remotely.
The contract is for a 2-year period with the option to extend the term by two one-year periods if required. It is envisaged that a competitive tender procedure for future services will be issued in early/mid 2021 and completed within the 2-year timeframe. Additional resources will be sourced to ensure the tender proceeds within that timeframe. Hence the full 4-year cost quoted in the VEAT notice (as prescribed) is not expected to be spent under this contract. The total projected value of the contract over 2 years is EUR 29.73 m.


Winner: Global ENTSERV Solutions Ireland Ltd
Award value: 58042826