RM405 MANAGED OFF-SITE DATA CENTRE HOSTING

The University, located across the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire is one of the UK’s leading universities providing quality teaching, outstanding research as well as working with the regional and local community, businesses and industry. The University employs over 2,500 staff with over 28,000 post-graduate and under-graduate students.

The University IT Service (ITS) provides the IT facilities to support teaching, research and administrative services used by both staff and students across the University. The University has two data centres; one on the City campus and one on the Headingley campus.

The Headingley Data Centre suffers from issues with environment, power and structural integrity. A case study was carried out to investigate potential options and the University now wishes to procure managed IT hosting facilities referred to hereinafter as the “New Hosting Facility” to be used to host the Headingley facility.

To meet its disaster recovery and business continuity objectives, the New Hosting Facility must be located a minimum of 1000 metres away from the Leeds City Campus, measured from the central campus complex at LS1 3ES. The University will also require the New Hosting Facility to be within a certain travelling distance as University staff will need to attend the facility for operational reasons.

This does not exclude companies from tendering, but the provision of the service must meet these physical requirements. The University intends to procure physically diversely routed, network communication links between its Leeds City Campus and its Headingley Campus and the New Hosting Facility, using separate communications vendors. The University also wishes to procure services to move its equipment from the Headingley Data Centre to the New Hosting Facility as required.