DSU Managed Hosting en Beheer

The contract timeline is as follows:

• Intended start date of the Agreement: September 1, 2027.
• Initial duration: 48 months.
• Maximum duration: 120 months (10 years).

Key milestones and phases leading to the contract start include:

• Publication of Request for Information 2 - Selection phase: November 26, 2026.
• Submission of Request for Participation Dialogue phase (incl. references) - Selection phase: December 7, 2026, at 12:00 PM.
• Internal verification phase of submitted documents / assessment of references and answers to selection criteria by Tenderers - Selection phase: December 7, 2026, to January 21, 2027.
• Announcement of selection decision for the 4 selected candidates for participation in the Competitive Dialogue rounds: January 21, 2027.
• End date of objection period Selection (20 calendar days): February 10, 2027.
• Publication of starting note topics dialogue round - Start dialogue phase: February 11, 2027.
• 1st Competitive Dialogue round: February 18, 2027, to March 11, 2027.
• Publication of draft Descriptive Document with appendices: April 1, 2027.
• 2nd Competitive Dialogue round: April 5, 2027, to April 15, 2027.
• Publication of final Descriptive Document with appendices: April 23, 2027.
• May holiday: April 24, 2027, to May 2, 2027.
• Submission of questions Request for Information 1 Dialogue phase: May 11, 2027, at 12:00 PM.
• Publication of Request for Information 1 - Dialogue phase: May 24, 2027.
• Submission of final Tender - Start tendering phase (award phase): June 7, 2027.
• Announcement of Award Decision Tendering phase: July 7, 2027.
• Objection period Award Decision end date (20 calendar days) - Tendering phase: July 27, 2027.
• Final award decision / Intended start date of the Agreement: September 1, 2027.

The core scope of work for this tender involves contracting a single service provider for comprehensive ICT services related to managed hosting and management. The main components of this assignment include:

1. Datacenter Services: This encompasses the housing of ICT infrastructure within the European Economic Area (EER), including power, cooling, physical security, redundancy, connectivity with systems, and ensuring high availability and continuity.

2. Hosting Services: This covers the hosting of systems and applications, including servers, storage, networks, back-up and restore facilities (with geographical distribution), and meeting performance and availability requirements.

3. Management Services: This involves technical and operational management (preventive, curative, and additive), monitoring, incident management, and providing reporting and compliance support. Specific services include managed services (during office hours or 24x7 as an option) and a basic security package.

4. Strategic Partnership: The tender seeks a fixed partner for the full range of services, emphasizing cooperation at operational, tactical, and strategic levels, and a focus on knowledge sharing and continuous development.

5. Compliance and Governance: This requires adherence to relevant certifications, laws, and regulations, such as AVG (GDPR), BIO, NIS2, and DORA. It also includes setting up governance and audit capabilities, and focusing on digital sovereignty and cyber resilience. This specifically covers audits, AVG/DPIA, ISO27001 chain assurance, and BIO, NIS2, and DORA.

6. Transition: This involves the migration of the current ICT environment to the new one with minimal service disruption, and the transformation to a modern, scalable, and open-source technology-based environment. The contractor is expected to carry out a controlled and phased migration and transformation based on predetermined steps and planning, with an emphasis on minimal disruption. They must also provide fallback scenarios and manage risks and dependencies during the migration and transformation process.

7. Innovation and Further Development: This component focuses on innovation and ongoing development based on the client's cooperation vision plan.

Items explicitly outside the scope of this tender include application management for Venus, Datawarehouse, ePortaal, Diane, future applications, and functional management within DSU. The service provider is also expected to advise the contracting authority on optimization, risks, and relevant developments in ICT and service provision.