The AFP requires the services of a suitably experienced vendor to provide software assurance for perpetually licensed VMware products that do not have an active Broadcom support contract in place. Information is also sought for professional services to maintain the suite of VMware products currently deployed to our network.

The users and their needs:

Working with staff within the Chief Information Officer Command, the service provider will be required to provide software assurance and services for all products in the VMware VCF suite including vSphere, NSX, and vRealize Aria Suite. Including specific versions:

• vSphere 7 and 8,
• vSAN 7 and 8
• NSX 3.2 and 4.2
• vRealize Aria Automation 8.x
• vRealize Aria Operations 8.x
• vRealize Aria Operations for Logs 8.x
• vRealize Aria Operations for Networks 6.x
• vRealize Identity Manager 3.3

Software assurance:

• Please provide your software assurance offering for VMware products in use under perpetual license arrangements with expired Broadcom support.
• Please provide a detailed outline of your ongoing maintenance and security patching and/or risk mitigation strategies for emerging vulnerabilities

Software Support:

Please provide your software support offerings for VMware products.

• Technical support break/fix services, please include details around support process, ticketing system, response and resolution times.
• Please include SLAs with expected response times and performance metrics.
• Support hours: Various depending on severity level and SLA (eg sev1 = 24/7/365)
• Technical guidance for configuration and best practice.

Vendor Capability:

Please provide background information on your capability including

• Company background
• VMware Certifications and partnerships with VMware.

Pricing Structures:

Information on pricing models including indicative costs for vendor metrics. e.g. per incident, subscription based and time periods offered.

Vendor to provide optional value add Professional Services:

Please provide professional service offering for

Examples of services required are:

• vSphere Administration, Configuration and Management. Includes vSAN.
• NSX Administration, network design, deployment, and configuration, including security and DFW
• Aria Automation, including development of new IaaS catalog services, integration with external systems, and software lifecycle with Ansible.
• Business intelligence dash boarding and reporting using vRealize Aria Operations to provide various insights to AFP business for FinOps visibility, Capacity reporting and forecasting, optimisations, amongst other similar capabilities as required
• Day to day troubleshooting, break/fix and BAU activities for the product suite