The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries – Information and Technology Partner (Customer), provides two (2) managed fibre channel connected block storage services in the form of SAN Tier 1 and SAN Tier 2. Both SAN storage services are underpinned by six (6) hybrid SAN storage arrays and two (2) SAN storage virtualisation platforms deployed within ITP’s Data Centres.

The Customer has three (3) models of hybrid SAN storage arrays (two arrays per model), all of which have been configured to offer T1 and T2 services. The Customer also utilises a SAN storage virtualisation platform that virtualises both T1 and T2 SAN storage, enabling active/active replication of data between two (2) Data Centres for use by inter-data centre VMware or SQL clusters.

The infrastructure that supports the three (3) models of hybrid SAN Storage has an average asset life of five (5) years. The Customer has identified that the infrastructure that supports one (1) of the SAN Storage Models and the virtualisation platform has reached its end of asset life and needs to be replaced. The Customer notes that the infrastructure that supports the remaining two models reach end of life in the coming one (1) to two (2) years.

The Customer has issued this Invitation to Offer with the objectives of:
* Replacement and consolidation of SAN Storage Arrays and Storage Virtualisation Platforms over the next three (3) years, with current technology
* Reduce operational and contractual complexity
* Reduce data centre footprint
* Reduce Total Cost of Ownership