Tasmania seeks hosted private cloud for server, storage

State government plans gradual migration to infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

The Tasmanian government revealed plans to gradually move to an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model as part of its ICT strategy.

In a request for tender published over the weekend, Tasmania sought proposals to “provide hosted server and storage facilities, as well as a range of higher layer platform and/or application management services, to government agencies and other eligible customers.”

TMD, a division of the Tasmanian department of premier and cabinet that provides communications for the government, said it will likely choose two providers, and contracts will be awarded by March next year.

The request for tender is part of a Tasmanian ICT strategy established in late 2011. The strategy set a goal that by 2017 “all common commodity ICT services will be consolidated and provided as a service to agencies”.

“The government’s vision is for this RFT to result in a hosted private cloud solution providing infrastructure as a service server and storage solutions to agencies and other eligible customers,” according to the request for tender.

The state government expects to “gradually migrate” to IaaS, “in line with hardware refresh cycles,” it said. Ongoing management of some platforms and applications could be supported through higher layer management services, it said.

“In addition, TMD is currently going through a transformation process to refocus on its core business of whole of Government services,” it said.

“As a result, some agency specific systems which TMD currently provide will need to be migrated to other arrangements and it is anticipated that a number of these services could be supported by the successful Tenderer(s).”

The IaaS services are expected to use Tasmania’s wide area network, Networking Tasmania II, for physical hosting facilities and interconnection between sites. The network is layer 3, private, IP, MPLS network. The core network is sourced from Telstra, while Internet services are currently sourced from Telstra and AARNet.

The IaaS server must support Windows Server and Linux, including RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS, the tender said. Solaris support may be required in the long term, it said.

“The Government wishes to take advantage of existing capabilities which may be available in the market and to provide an opportunity for suppliers to demonstrate their capabilities prior to any large-scale approach to market which may occur as part of the Government’s medium to long term planning,” it said.

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Tags private cloudstorageservertasmaniarequest for tenderstateInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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