Royal Navy Museums Broadband Services

All existing broadband connections to Museum sites are provided by a single supplier. The individual Museum sites are currently interlinked via an MPLS network provided by the current supplier. Each site has a Juniper SRX300 router installed which is managed by the current ISP. The Portsmouth HQ site has a Juniper SRX340. Backup connections are also present at each site for redundancy, with a separate router installed and managed by the current ISP. The backup connection at the Portsmouth HQ site terminates into a separate building. As part of the MPLS network provided by the current ISP, all sites route through a cloud firewall and have a centralised internet breakout. We are provided visibility over the cloud firewall through an online portal which allows us to view and download firewall logs and add/edit/remove inbound firewall rules for our sites as required.

Museum IT infrastructure and services are centralised at the HQ site in Portsmouth. Other sites communicate with this infrastructure to access resources over the MPLS network. Multiple VLANs are in use across all Museums sites to support differing requirements. The Museum also has a presence in Microsoft Azure and an offsite datacentre, which is hosting a full Disaster Recovery infrastructure, but these do not form part of the existing MPLS network.

The broadband connection at the Portsmouth HQ site is currently shared between 6 separate businesses onsite, each with their own public IP address(es). The Museum also has requirements to route certain services using individual public IP addresses.

The current site connections are outlined in the document.

Royal Navy Museums is evaluating different broadband options available and as part of this procurement, would like to consider two technologies that we believe can deliver the requirements of the business; MPLS and SD-WAN.

As the Museum has been operating on an MPLS network for several years, we know that this technology can deliver the requirements. SD-WAN has previously been considered but never implemented for the Museum. The Museum is now in a position to evaluate its suitability to deliver the requirements, whilst assessing potential benefits and cost savings.

This procurement has been split into two lots, representing the separate considerations for MPLS and SD-WAN. To help the Museum make an informed decision, we would like to invite suppliers to respond to both lots and pitch solutions for both MPLS and SD-WAN. This will allow the Museum to assess the benefits, operating costs and overall suitability of the two solutions to help identify which is best able to deliver the requirements over the next 3-5 years. Whilst we would encourage suppliers to respond to both lots to help inform our decision, Royal Navy Museums recognise that this may not be possible for all suppliers. Therefore, if a supplier is only able to offer a solution for one of the lots, we would still welcome their response.

It should be noted that, following evaluation, only one of the two lots will be awarded depending on the suitability of each solution for the Museum. Where possible, we would like all sites to be managed under a single contract.

The internal networking of our sites is out of scope of this procurement. Suppliers also do not need to include connectivity for the offsite datacentre in their proposal.

Pricing

The maximum budget available for the individual lots are detailed within the individual lot requirements. Cost proposals should include any installation and equipment costs, if appropriate. As part of your submission, please indicate when billing for services would be expected to start.