Ethekwini Municipality Metropolitan Network

Enquiry : S3434

eThekwini Municipality Metropolitan Network

Upgrade

And

Monitoring and Maintenance of Entire Network

Request for Proposals

1Introduction

EThekwini Municipality has identified a need to upgrade its Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) to allow it to run multi-services over a common backbone. It also needs to extend its MAN to 24 WAN sites, which have been identified as Regional Centres for one stop shop services. The municipality is currently looking at running fibre to these 24 sites that were previously connected via diginet. EThekwini is also looking for a Service Provider to monitor and maintain not only the MAN but the entire network, on a proactive basis.

EThekwini Municipality is in the process of consolidating and centralising the IT infrastructure in line with international trends.This will enable it to adopt a more strategic focus, thus providing a more effective IT service deliverable, and achieving standardisation and consistency across the network.

This request for proposals (RFP) document defines detailed requirements in the section ‘Scope of Requirements’.

The municipality’s objectives for pursuing the delivery of Network services include:

To enable centralised / decentralised control of the Network

To maintain standardisation and consistency

To deliver an effective and sustainable service

To gain access to necessary expertise and resources

To enable eThekwini IT management to focus on strategic planning

To reduce the cost of services

2Corporate Overview

In line with the strategic aims expressed in the municipality’s Long Term Development Framework and the Integrated Development Plan, one of the missions of the municipality’s IT department is ” to facilitate and ensure the provision of infrastructure, services and support, thereby creating an enabling environment for all employees and citizens to utilise their access opportunities and full potential, which will enable them to contribute towards a vibrant and sustainable economy with full employment, and thus create a better quality of life for all.”

To achieve this vision, one of the core pillars of strategy for the eThekwini Municipality is to build skills and the appropriate technology infrastructure to improve the quality of life of all people within its boundaries. This strategy includes plans to enable the city to become a true “smart” city through partnerships with industry, educational institutions and communities that will facilitate local access to excellent information and technology services. Most importantly, Municipal institutions need to become a model of how high skilled information technology service providers operate.

In order to transform the eThekwini Municipality to its desired future state, it has been identified that a fully integrated mode of operations is required. This means that the current practice of business units working autonomously requires a new structure to ensure that everyone “works together as a team to satisfy customer needs”. Therefore, a great degree of consolidation and integration of the current Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructures is taking place.

The successful respondent will provide a technology framework that will allow the municipality to achieve its strategic objectives.

3Objectives of Networking and Telecommunications

From the municipality’s point of view the fundamental objective is to provide ubiquitous, high-quality networking and telecommunications that supports the current and future essential network and telecommunications applications of the municipality. The broader objective is to encourage the availability of affordable high-speed access within eThekwini to grow and enhance the municipality’s workforce and bring greater prosperity to the citizens and businesses of eThekwini.

The following key qualities are critical in a well-designed network and telecommunication infrastructure:

High availability

Reliability

Robustness

Maintainability

Dependability

Scalability

Adaptability

Flexibility

Cost-effectiveness

High Performance

4Network Overview

As discussed in the previous sections, eThekwini MUNICIPALITY is in the process of consolidating and centralising many of its service functions, and IT is also moving from a decentralised to a centralised organisation and management. Some services, systems and processes have not yet been upgraded to accommodate the future demands of the MUNICIPALITY.

The services being considered in this RFP are discussed in detail in the section “Scope of Requirements”. The following points will give a brief understanding of the current eThekwini MUNICIPALITY IT environment in South Africa:

There are approximately 17 MAN and 150 WAN sites

There are approximately 5000 email users.

There are approximately 1000 Internet users.

Approximately 32 applications are in use deployed on various platforms, ranging from IBM mainframe to PC. There are over 600 databases.

The wide area network consists of around 400 leased lines, most of which are 64K.

A number of remote agents have dial-up access to the WAN, or Internet access

There is a central helpdesk providing support for certain enterprise-wide IT services such as email and WAN. The Helpdesk uses the CA - ServiceDesk application

WAN & LAN equipment is predominantly but not limited to Alcatel at the core, Cisco at the distribution and end node and 3com and Cisco hubs and switches to provide LAN connectivity

4.1Equipment breakdown is roughly estimated as follows

a)MAN – consists of the four core nodes (Martin West Building (MWB), Shell House, Winder Street, Old Fort Complex) which form the backbone. The remaining sites that form an extension to the backbone are:

City Hall

Rennies House

GIS

Embassy Building

Ethekwini Metro Library (former DML)

City Police

Electricity

City Health

City Engineers

Central Fire

Water Services

Emergency Services

MAN is based on ATM OC3.

b)Critical Equipment – consists of routers, switches and pix firewalls that are critical to the municipality’s business. These are:

2 x Cisco 3745 Routers(with 2 X NM8A/S module) – Located at MWB 8th Floor

11 x Cisco 2950T switches – Located at MWB 8th Floor

6 x Cisco 2950T switches – Located at MWB Ground Floor

1 x Cisco 2950T switch – Located at MWB 2nd Floor

1 x Cisco PIX Firewall – Located at Martin West Building 8th

1 x Cisco 3620 (with NM8A/S module) – Located at Martin West Building 8th

1 X Cisco 3640 with ISDN PRI interface – Located at Martin West Building 8th

1 x Cisco 3745 (with 2 x NM8A/S modules) – Located at Emergency Services

1 x Cisco 2600 Router( 2 x Fe modules) - Located at Emergency Services

1 x Cisco 2950T switch - Located at Emergency Services

1 x Cisco PIX Firewall – Located at City Health

1 x Cisco 3640 (2 x NM8A/S) – City Health

3 x Cisco 2950 Switches – Located at City Police

1 x Cisco 3620 (NM8A/S)

1 x 3com 3300 – Located at Chest Clinic

1 X Cisco 4009 – Located at Electricity

1 x Cisco 6000 Series – Located at Water Services (to be purchased)

2 x Cisco 3745 (With 2 x NM8A/S, 3 x NM16A/S) – Library Services

1 x Cisco PIX – Library services.

9 x Cisco 2600 routers (NM8A/S) – Library services.

1 x Cisco 2600 (NM8A/S)- Kingsburgh

1 x Cisco 3620 (NM8A/S)- Kloof

1 x Cisco 2610 (NM8A/S) – Tongaat

1 x Cisco 3745 (NM8A/S) – Pinetown

c)Other networking equipment:

(On the MAN):

35 x Cisco 2950T

(On the WAN – approximately 30km radius)

35 Cisco 1751 Routers (WiC 2T)

10 Cisco 1601 Router (WIC 1T)

5 x Cisco 1720 Routers (WIC 1T)

10 x Cisco 1750 (WIC 2T)

10 x Cisco 805 ISDN Routers

30 x Cisco 805 serial Routers

55 x Cisco 1760 routers

4.2Single Mode and Redundancy

EThekwini has just replaced all its multimode fibre with single mode, which means that in addition to the multimode that exist there is unused single mode fibre. Redundant routes have also been created for all devices terminating at the Old Fort Complex to terminate at Martin West Building as well and all devices terminating at Martin West Building to terminate at Old Fort Complex. This has been done to eliminate any single point of failure on the municipality’s network

4.3PEBX Network

Currently the municipality’s voice network is separate from its data network. The municipality is currently looking at connecting all the PEBX’s around the council together, to form one common (311xxxx) number to create a single telecommunication system providing all users with common four digit numbering scheme and full feature transparency across the network, giving the public the perception of a common switchboard at a centre location for all service enquiries. The municipality has a number of PEBX’s on the MAN as per Appendix 1 and about 23 on the WAN (separate from data links). Full feature transparency is required in the voice environment.

4.4WAN Current and Future

The municipality’s WAN sites are currently connected via 64-256k diginet lines. The capability is required to be able to connect these sites via fibre. Twenty four (24) sites have been identified that are going to be the municipality’s one stop shops to which fiber connectivity is being investigated and/or planned as soon as possible. These sites are found within a 50km radius from Durban Central. Five of these sites are going to be major centres (Pinetown, Winkelspruit (Kingsburgh), Umlazi, Verulam and Kwa Mashu) the others will be smaller sites. The proposed network design should cater for this.

5Potential RFP Respondents

5.1Vision

Demonstrate your vision for this initiative and how it will continually drive all your decisions.

5.2Viability

Demonstrate that you are still going to be in business several years from now. Are you capable of growing and investing in your offering? Indicate financial position, marketing programs and plans, stability of workforce, strategy, management record, business model, etc.

5.3Installed Base

Indicate the number of customers who are currently using your proposed infrastructure/solution?

Number of installed base

Customer satisfaction with vendor support

Recent sales?

Provide reference sites, preferably but not necessarily local

5.4Product Support

Demonstrate how you would support this infrastructure/solution to give the municipality a peace of mind, and the ease of support and maintenance of the infrastructure/solution

Customer support

Technical support and consulting

Number of support resources (including third party)

Geographic reach, including local support

5.5Partnerships

What sort of relationships do you have with the other vendors? Indicate any that you plan to forge

Vendors that provide added software infrastructure

Vendors that provide added channels and improve the quality of the your infrastructure platform

Market site providers that name your infrastructure platform as the technology of choice

5.6Professional Services

Are services available to configure and install the infrastructure/solution and using the technology for initial setting up of the environment and establishing best practices? These services may be through sister organizations or through multiple, strong partnerships with other organizations.

5.7Socio-Economic Objectives

Indicate how, through the deployment of your infrastructure, you would contribute to the achievement of the following city goals:

Black Economic Empowerment

Developing local ICT skills and retaining them in KZN

Employment creation

Growing SMME’s and making them sustainable

Reducing dependence on off-shore vendors and their licensing policies

Encouraging investment in local economy

The money that the city spends not only circulates in the local economy, but also benefits the citizens of this city.

5.8Procurement Policy

The municipality’s Targeted Procurement Policy shall apply in selecting the successful partner. So demonstrate how you would meet the BEE objectives of the municipality by completing separate forms attached with this RFP.

5.9Alignment with Local initiatives

Indicate if and how your proposal is aligned to any other local initiative(s) within the Greater Durban region.

5.10Services and Support

Demonstrate you ability to deliver a breadth of network services, including implementation and design, maintenance, help desk, call centre, security, managed services and consultation. Show the ability to support in the order of 5000 users, 17 MAN and 150 WAN sites throughout the eThekwini MUNICIPALITY region. It is also critical to demonstrate a proven methodology and standards

It is imperative that prospective respondents meet the above requirements or fully demonstrate their capabilities with respect to Section 5. Failure to satisfy any of the above may result in elimination during the assessment phase. Short meaningless answers such as “noted”, “complied with” etc. will not be acceptableand might be seen as sufficient reason to cancel the respective bid.

6Timeline

The timeline below lists the major milestones in the RFP process, and their expected completion dates. This is intended as a guide to the process that eThekwini MUNICIPALITY has adopted, and dates may be subject to change.

7Scope of Requirements

This section outlines the scope of requirements to be provided

The main sections of the framework are given below:

RFP Objectives

MAN Upgrade Requirements (Part 1 of RFP)

Maintenance and monitoring requirements. (Part 2 of RFP)

7.1RFP Objectives

High speed MAN which is broadband

Redundancy – minimise single point of failure and increase fault tolerance.

Maximum Availability

Reduced complexity

To converge our voice network into our data network

Virtual meetings using video conferencing

Reduce costs

Increase interoperability

Scalable – If municipality needs to connect its WAN sites situated about 50km away via fibre to the MAN, it should be able to do it.

Enhanced security.

To be able to contain the outbreak of viruses by possibly VLANing buildings.

To be able to easily pinpoint problems on the network.

Availability of local support (onsite).

Quality of Service (QoS).

To be able to monitor bandwidth utilization.

7.2MAN Upgrade Requirements

7.2.1Upgrade Backbone and MAN that currently run on mostly OC3 ATM.

a)This consists of the 4 main core sites: Martin West Building, Old Fort Complex, Shell House and Winder Street. The sites that form an extension to the backbone:

City Hall

Rennies House

GIS

Embassy Building

EThekwini Metro Library (former DML)

City Police

Electricity

City Health

City Engineers

Central Fire

Water Services

Emergency Services

b)This should also include the 24 sites mentioned under section 4.4. These sites will need to be connected to the backbone in the near future.

7.2.2Solution to cater for future voice integration.

Initially it is envisaged that the municipality’s PEBX’s will be linked to the network using E1 interfaces. Appendix 1 will shows locations of PEBX’s and minimum E1 interfaces required. The 24 sites mentioned in section 4.4 should be also included, as each of these sites will also have a PEBX. Solution must support full feature transparency in a voice environment. QoS is important. Environment must be ETSI complaint. The solution should allow the municipality to use its existing handsets.

7.2.3Option to run IP telephony for 7000 users.

7.2.4Option to make all our PEBX’s complaint for option 7.2.2.

7.2.5Dial-in solution for our after hours users.

Solution should cater for min 1 x 2mb ISDN and 16 x Telkom lines. Dial-in security should also be built into the solution.

7.2.6Design solution to help contain viruses during virus outbreaks.

Currently, 80% of the network is flat structure. Consider VLANing. Provide implementation details and timelines.

7.2.7High speed LAN for Martin West computer room to accommodate about 72 servers.

7.3Monitoring and maintenance of the entire network

7.3.1Maintenance of New Network as well as all existing equipment.

Includes equipment on the MAN and WAN which spans approximately 50 km’s. SLA will have to be entered into according to the following criteria. Not meeting specified SLA’s could mean termination/penalties of contract.

Backbone and MAN as per 4.1(a) as well as proposed new equipment – 2 hours fix/replace

Critical List as per 4.1(b) – 2 hours fix/replace

Rest of equipment as per 4.1 (c) – Next business day

Also it should be noted that a growth of 5% of the network should be factored in as well. Updating of router and switches software should be done on a regular basis. Inventory and documenting of the network should be part of this contract. Successful respondent should have a help desk through which calls will be forwarded and managed within times stipulated.

7.3.2Proactive Monitoring of entire network. The following should be part of this proactive monitoring:

Monitoring should be done 24X7.

Diagnosing of network problems should be done real time 24x7.

By proactive it is meant that if some device goes down, eThekwini staff should be notified, and an Engineer from successful respondent company should be dispatched to fix the problem.

Diagnosing network problems should be part of the monitoring on a real time basis, but should a network diagnostic tool like a sniffer be required, it should be provided as part of this contract.

Option should be given to do monitoring onsite or at service provider’s site.

7.3.3Reporting

A detailed report of bandwidth usage on total and port basis, equipment availability, network performance, network problems and resolution, things that are required to address impending problems.

Billing statistics on a per port or per site basis.

7.3.4Network Strategy and Planning

EThekwini Municipality will own the IT strategy

The service provider will actively participate in the IT strategy development process, including assisting in:

Assessment of current technology, application, data and telecommunications environment

Assessment of customer (user) needs and priorities

7.3.5Network Architecture and Standards

EThekwini and the Service Provider will work together to research, define and develop Network architecture and standards

The following are included:

Assist in the development of Managed Network policies, procedures and standards

Manage and support the architecture for:

a)Networks and networked applications

b)Server platforms

c)Telecommunications

7.3.6Network Vendor Relations

EThekwini will have a service provider relationship with the service provider. This is expected to operate at two levels:

a)Strategic account management, where eThekwini MUNICIPALITY and the service provider interact at a high level to manage the relationship and strategic issues through a defined channel

b)Operational account management, where various eThekwini MUNICIPALITY managers interact with the service provider managers to manage service delivery and operational issues for each service area

The service provider will assist in the management of, and communication with third party service providers as necessary, to deliver the agreed services