Disaster Recovery Services

Background

Ofwat’s current IT DR contract is up for renewal on 3rd May 2016. At present all ICT is provisioned from our Birmingham premises via our onsite ICT systems, with high speed point to point communications to our London satellite office, and the IT DR arrangements consist of a schedule of equipment being delivered to an alternate location, normally our London office, and assistance with the restoration of data and ICT services from that location.

As an initial requirement we would look to have and similar arrangement in place as of 3rd May.

Going forward it is intended that most of these systems will be moving to the cloud as either SaaS, PaaS or IaaS.

During this transition we require a supplier of IT DR services to work with us on this, to continue to provide DR for our current Hardware based infrastructure, and to advise us on best practice and guidance on how, when transitioning to cloud based services we incorporate DR into the new estate all within a model of minimal disruption and minimal risk to Ofwats business, and to ensure that effective DR arrangements are in place at all stages of the transition to Cloud Based services.

We would also like to include in the contract addition value added services detailed in the scope below.

Ofwat operates from two locations:

Scope

Within the scope of the IT Disaster Recovery (DR) contract we require the following.

DR Services to cover our current Hardware based ICT services.

Costed option for Daily collection / delivery and secure storage of backup tapes, on an agreed rotation basis, from our Birmingham office with 24/7 access to any stored tapes.

As services are transitioned to the cloud, provision of backup services (e.g. cloud to cloud ) to maintain our current secure robust backup services. Details of data amounts to be discussed / decided as transitioning progresses. We are at present performing a review of our current compute consumption with early indications showing that we can consolidate our infrastructure as part of the cloud migration.

During critical periods within our business cycle we are looking to be able to resume our ICT capability with an RTO of ½ day, this we understand is not possible with our current configuration (and onsite server delivery model of IT DR), but is an aim for the future once in the cloud. We are still in the process of determining our RPO.

In order to ensure the security of Ofwats information and it’s systems it is required that all suppliers must hold ISO 27000/1 accreditation and be able to demonstrate compliance.

It is also required that suppliers must be ISO 22301 accredited, be able to demonstrate compliance and be able to inform Ofwat of best practice to support our Business Continuity activities.

Additional information: For further information, please contact: procurement@ofwat.gsi.gov.uk

Please note that cost is based on estimated Year 1 Call Off Contract Charges. The Contract provides for 2 Contract extensions.