National Procurement Centre of Expertise IT Hardware Contract - FAQs

Transcription

1 National Procurement Centre of Expertise IT Hardware Contract - FAQs BACKGROUND The NPCoE is the organisation tasked with procuring national commodities and services on behalf of all Scottish public bodies. It has been established in response to the Review of Public Sector Procurement in Scotland (known as the McClelland report ), which views national and sectoral Centres of Expertise as the major vehicles for driving collaborative, advanced procurement in the public sector. The NPCoE has ministerial endorsement to manage the procurement of a specified range of common goods and services across all sectors to deliver sustainable best economic value for money (VFM) solutions, in line with national targets via market-leading prices and terms. On 14 th December 2007, the NPCoE held its first eauction for IT Hardware. This project is the first demonstration of the benefits to be gained from collaboration at a Category A (National) level. To harness the combined purchasing power of the Scottish public sector, organisations from the Central Government, Local Authority and Higher & Further Education sectors participated in the eauction for desktop PCs, TFT monitors and laptops. This document is supplementary to the auction contract summary and for ease of reference, is broken into 3 distinct areas: CONTRACTUAL FAQs SUPPLIER FAQs TECHNICAL FAQs Who is eligible to use the NPCoE contract? We are a Scottish Charity. Is the contract available to us? Does this contract comply with current EU procurement legislation? How long do the contractual arrangements/pricing apply? Are the expected end of life dates fixed or can these be brought forward without negotiation? What hardware is available under this contract? What are the lead times for desktops and laptops? Is online order tracking available? How do I find out more details on the contract? Who are the suppliers? Do the suppliers have dedicated sectoral Account Managers? Who are Lenovo? Where are Lenovo and Fujitsu currently positioned by Gartner? Do Lenovo have a base in Scotland? Will the same chipset be used over the life of the product? Who provides warranty? Does the hardware come with Remote Management pre-installed? Any additional services available eg, imaging? Are there any upgrades available? We have a Microsoft Enterprise Licence Agreement, does the contract allow flexibility in terms of operating systems? Do the PCs come in multiple form factors? Is there support for Linux? Is there a method of configuring the BIOS?

2 CONTRACTUAL FAQs (Return to Summary) Any Scottish Public Sector Contracting Authority is eligible to use NPCoE contracts. If your organisation is 50% or more publicly funded, then you may be in scope for both NPCoE and CGCoPE contracts. The tender process and subsequent eauction was carried out under the terms and conditions of the OGC s Catalist Framework which is a fully OJEU compliant framework. No further procurement action or mini-competition is required. Contracting Authorities can place orders direct with the suppliers. The contracts and pricing are in place for the duration of each product s lifespan. Full details can be found in the auction summary. The end of life dates are fixed and form part of the terms and conditions of contract. A corporate workstation (PC & TFT monitor), a workstation (PC only), a 17 TFT monitor, a standard laptop and an ultraportable laptop. From receipt of a valid Purchase Order, lead times are as follows: o Lenovo desktops 9 days o Lenovo monitors 9 days o Lenovo laptops 4 days o Fujistu desktops 10 days Insight to confirm. On-line order tracking is available where orders have been placed using the Computacenter Connect on-line ordering system which can be implemented FOC and will provide product information, stock availability and on-line order tracking. The catalogue can be made available to Contracting Authorities via PECOS. Alternatively, contact Gordon Neill, Portfolio Manager for IT Hardware on (gordon.neill@scotland.gsi.gov.uk) or Gill McLeod, Strategic Buyer on (gill.mcleod@scotland.gsi.gov.uk).

3 SUPPLIER FAQs (Return to Summary) The NPCoE contracts are with Insight (UK) Ltd and Computacenter. Insight have partnered with Lenovo and Computacenter have partnered with Fujitsu Siemens Computers. Insight is one of the world s leading single source providers of IT products and services. Founded in 1988, they have a presence in over 170 countries around the world, over 4,500 employees and revenues of over $3.0billion. Computacenter is a leading European independent provider of IT infrastructure services. Formed in 1981, Computacenter today has over 9,000 employees across Europe and Group revenues of over 2.2billion. Insight have dedicated Account Managers for each sector within the Scottish Public Sector and Computacenter have, at the moment, one Account Manager who covers the Scottish Public Sector. Full details are provided in the auction summary document. The Lenovo Group completed the acquisition of IBM s Personal Computing Division in 2005, making the company a new international IT competitor and the third largest computing company in the world. Lenovo have been granted a licence to use the IBM brand known as ThinkCentre (PCs) and ThinkPad (laptops). Gartner is a market independent information and technology research and advisory firm. The Magic Quadrant is designed to assist global enterprise customers select desktop suppliers. Lenovo are regarded as leaders in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Enterprise Desktop PCs. The leaders in the Magic Quadrant are all international vendors that can provide consistent products and services across multiple regions. These vendors have wider geographical coverage, a comprehensive sales organisation, financial stability, comprehensive customer support, a broader product portfolio, longer product availability and a larger market presence. FSC are regarded as visionaries. Their market presence may be less than the leaders and their sales organisation may not be as comprehensive. Lenovo s office in Paisley officially opened on 7 th February Around 125 people, subject matter experts in the area of business transformation and IT, accounting, supply chain, sales and demand and supply management operations will be based there. The office will support Lenovo operations around the globe, with particular emphasis on Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

4 TECHNICAL FAQs (Return to Summary) To ensure a stable image platform, the same chipset and motherboard will be used over the lifespan of the product and is not subject to change. IBM Global Services provide the Lenovo warranty services world-wide. The IBM contact centre which handles world-wide warranty support is located at Greenock. Computacenter are the first point of contact for Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) who will carry out warranty services. FSC have a large pool of Scottish based Field Engineers located throughout mainland Scotland. Both the desktops and laptops come with Intel vpro as standard. The NPCoE have negotiated a menu of optional additional services at the following fixed prices: Imaging 4 Asset Tagging 5 Uplift & Disposal 9 Install to Desk 18 Bonded Storage FOC (for a period of 6 months from date of delivery) There is a menu of upgrades available, full details are provided in the auction summary. Organisations with eligible upgrade rights from OEM Microsoft XP Home or Vista Home to XP Pro or Vista Business should provide suppliers with the media and licence key in relation to their Licensing Agreement to allow PCs and laptops to ship with the relevant 32-bit corporate operating system. PCs are available in ultra small and small form factor. To allow for expansion, PCs are also available in tower form. The M57p should take a Linux build. If you have a look at you will see that an M57 has been certified with RedHat EWS 5 and Suse Linux 10, so while the spec of the machine used isn't the same as the M57p in the tender, I don't see an issue with installing it. The spec of the machine certified was Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6550, 1GB, 80GB 7200RPM S-ATA HDD, no diskette drive, PCI/PCIe Tower (4x5), Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100, 16x DVD-ROM, Intel Gigabit Ethernet, Windows Vista Business 32. The only difference is the model is non vpro and its a smaller HDD. If required Lenovo can install the public bodies Linux image on the M57p in manufacturing, all we would need is a copy of the image so we can pass that on to the imaging centre to add to the manufacturing severs. Fujitsu Siemens Computers can provide its PC and Server Hardware platforms with a choice of operating systems. With regard to the Esprimo E5925 EPA system, this can be supplied from the factory with the Fedora Linux OS as an alternative to the Microsoft Operating system currently available. It

5 should be borne in mind that if the end user wishes to install a Windows OS at a later date, then they would need to purchase the relevant licence from Microsoft. The system unit with Fedora Linux would still be supplied with its standard Fujitsu Siemens Computers 3 year on site warranty. BIOS can be configured by various different methods. VPro devices work in tandem with SMS 2003 to give a degree of manageability. The BIOS could also be configured by third party products such as Altiris Management solution which we believe have Plug-ins that will work with Fujitsu Siemens. Lenovo work closely with LANDESK (another management solution). The vendor would have to comment on what plug ins were available for the particular management solution deployed. REFERENCE (Return to Summary) The auction summary document referred to throughout the FAQs is embedded below:

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