Library Management System Upgrade & Migration to Cloud Computing

Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union

Justification for selected award procedure:

The procurement falls outside the scope of application of the Directive

Explanation

The University wishes to upgrade its library management system from its current iteration and hosting platform ("Millennium", hosted on premise) to the latest release ("Sierra", hosted in Innovative's private cloud facility). Innovative own the intellectual property rights of the software.

The existing version of the system is several years old and the upgrade process will be complicated by the need to jump several versions. As Innovative is the developer of the software, it is envisaged that this upgrade will be executed with minimal risk of technical failure.

The existing system is tightly integrated with University business processes, other University systems and existing library hardware. The University has determined that transitioning to an alternative system at this time with different technical and operational characteristics would significantly impact on resources and processes and cause major disruption to all users. The significant risks of doing so would be financial, technical (including information security) and reputational.

The University therefore intends to issue the contract to Innovative for the reasons stated above. A VEAT notice was submitted on 23.02.2018 (2018/S 040-088199) regarding this procedure and the University of Chester has observed a 10-day standstill period which ended at midnight on the 05.3.2018.