Transport for NSW has opened tendering for the second last bundle of services to be let out to market under its revised ‘next generation’ infrastructure outsourcing program – seeking a firm to manage its network services.
Yesterday the agency issued a formal request for tenders to pre-selected companies, and plans to take offers on the bundle until 10 February 2015. Only suppliers on its restricted list have been invited to participate.
The work currently on the table is understood to include Transport for NSW’s core data network, LAN and WAN services.
Transport for NSW has indicated in the past that it hopes to have sealed a deal with a selected managed networks vendor by April 2015, leaving only the voice and mobile side of the telecommunications category left to outsource to the private sector.
The transport cluster – which includes operators such as Sydney and NSW Trains, the State Transit Authority, and Roads and Maritime – is close to the end of its infrastructure outsourcing overhaul.
The transport agencies were bundled under a single funding umbrella in November 2011 with the establishment of Transport for NSW as a lead agency, with a plan to collapse the IT teams of each agency into a single unit.
As part of the integration, Transport for NSW aims to leverage its newly consolidated structure to squeeze more value out of consolidated tech outsourcing deals, while at the same time achieving faster fixes, more cost transparency and a clearer path to use of cloud services.
NEC has already been awarded the end-user computing bundle; and IBM has signed on to run the cluster's data centres under a $99 million, five year deal.
As of August, the cluster’s technology operations were still managed out of 14 different areas, employing as many as 1500 staff.
