Resources and services to support the organisation's planning and delivery of a Cloud Transition Programme for National digital services in Wales

This Prior Information Notice (PIN) is for DHCW to engage with suppliers to understand their capability, capacity and approaches to provide Cloud Transition resources who can support the following Lots:

Lot 1-Technical Readiness (Cloud Platforms)

Lot 2-Migration Planning and Support

Lot 3-Organisation Development - Enabling DHCW to become Cloud First

DHCW is seeking one or more suppliers to support this work. We have already undertaken a significant amount of work to estimate costs, consider migration approach and to develop a business case. The migration approach which has been selected is:

-Migrate, Optimise and Re-platform – services are migrated using a blend of rehosting and re-platforming services to maximise benefits and efficiencies associated with cloud hosting such as using Open-Source products

There are circa 90 services to migrate, on approximately 1,600 servers. Suppliers will need to be flexible to support various migration approaches and provide training and support for DHCW staff to develop cloud skills.

Due to the complexities and time constraints, it will require significant capabilities and experience in Cloud transformations and will need both internal SMEs as well as 3rd party partners to support the delivery in accordance with a planned programme of joint activity. It is proposed that the team is made up of a blend of in-house resources that are allocated full time and expert consultants. DHCW will appoint a suitably senior Programme Lead, Project Managers and Technical Leads to lead this programme.

The current services (those to be migrated) operate from a mix of two on-premises data centres, but others are already running in Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. The services will be migrated to one of these two platforms, but the programme is also looking to establish connectivity and tooling to enable other providers to be brought on-line as the need arises in the future.

Initial engagement will be via a Supplier Briefing session to be scheduled on Tuesday 14th January 2025. A full itinerary will be provided to those suppliers who express an interest.

The Authority's intention is, using the intelligence gained from the supplier Briefing session, to understand what Cloud Transition services are available in the market place with a view to undertaking a competitive procurement from March/April 2025. DHCW will potentially be seeking a multi vendor, multi lot Framework Agreement with the ability to call off resources to augment DHCW teams and output based requirements as necessitated by the Authority. The Authority may also consider off shoring options too. The initial term for the new Framework Agreement will be four (4) years. However, Suppliers are to note that the Authority is not bound to proceed with a future competitive procurement but will provide further and a more definitive notice to the market in relation to its intention to procure once the market engagement process is complete.