GB-Newcastle upon Tyne: T21/0050 - Avid system replacement

The Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences, is seeking to replace its Avid ISIS and Interplay storage and production management infrastructure as the components are end of life or near end of life.

The system is used to provide a secure, high bandwidth storage solution to enable post production of student digital media work using software applications such as Avid Media Composer, Avid Protools, Blackmagic Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects.

The infrastructure is currently the backbone to almost 60 workstation clients that support learning and teaching across a number of subject areas including Film and TV production, Media and Journalism, Film and TV studies, Film Foundation Fine Art, Graphic Design. The faculty also has an ambition to grow its postgraduate offering in Film and Media related subjects and engage in partnerships with external production companies that may also use the facilities.

Interplay/ production management was added to the current ISIS primarily to support the Journalism degree and provide access to Media Composer Cloud for students. The Journalism degree is no longer in operation and the University now runs a Citrix remote access solution to access workstations on Campus.

The current workstation breakdown consists of:

•54 x hp z440 workstations. These are split across computer labs and bookable editing booths

•1 x Mac Pro within a Colour Grading suite

•1x Mac Pro within a Audio Suite

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All workstations contain dual network cards. In November 2021 the University simplified its workflow to just using the ISIS without the workgroup facility to allow segregation from the campus to fulfil Cyber Essentials due to the old OS of the ISIS Hardware.

The faculty is an Avid Learning Partner and can deliver Media Composer certification at 100 and 200 level. Media Composer licenses are provided through the partnership.

Additional information: The contracting authority considers that this contract may be suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises (SMEs). However, any selection of tenderers will be based solely on the criteria set out for the procurement.