Section one: Contracting authority/entity
one.1) Name and addresses
Ministry of Defence, Defence Digital Commercial Sourcing Team
Bldg 405, MoD Corsham, Corsham, SN13 9NR, United Kingdom
Corsham
SN13 9NR
Contact
Hannah Boreham
Telephone
+44 7769148763
Country
United Kingdom
NUTS code
UK - United Kingdom
Internet address(es)
Main address
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence
one.4) Type of the contracting authority
Ministry or any other national or federal authority
one.5) Main activity
Defence
Section two: Object
two.1) Scope of the procurement
two.1.1) Title
DDSFTW/060 - Microsoft Unified Support & Design Services
Reference number
DDSFTW/060
two.1.2) Main CPV code
- 72261000 - Software support services
two.1.3) Type of contract
Services
two.1.4) Short description
Single source for the provision of Unified Support, Maintenance and Consultancy Service for 36 months from 1 June 22 through to 30 April 2025.
two.1.6) Information about lots
This contract is divided into lots: No
two.1.7) Total value of the procurement (excluding VAT)
Value excluding VAT: £31,000,000
two.2) Description
two.2.3) Place of performance
NUTS codes
- UK - United Kingdom
- UKJ - South East (England)
two.2.4) Description of the procurement
The Defence Digital Commercial Sourcing Team, part of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (the Authority), intends to award a contract to Microsoft Ltd (the Contractor) for software (including Microsoft Office 365 E5) consultancy, support and maintenance (including updates) services. The duration of the contract will be for 36 months from 1 June 2022 to 30 April 2025 and has an estimated value of £31,000,000 (ex VAT).
It is considered that this contract can be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to Article 32(2)(b)(ii) of Directive 2014/24/EU and Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (SI 102) on the basis that the services provided for in the contract can be supplied only by the Contractor, and that competition is absent, for technical reasons. The Contractor alone has the specific technical knowledge and skills necessary to undertake the services as they own and have developed the relevant software products and applications used by the Authority in connection with its operations
Please note this contract is yet to be awarded, this VTN remains open until 12.00 on the 30 May 2022.
two.2.5) Award criteria
Price
two.2.11) Information about options
Options: No
two.2.13) Information about European Union Funds
The procurement is related to a project and/or programme financed by European Union funds: No
Section four. Procedure
four.1) Description
four.1.1) Type of procedure
Negotiated procedure without publication of a contract notice
- No tenders or no suitable tenders/requests to participate in response to negotiated procedure with prior publication of a contract notice
- The products involved are manufactured purely for the purpose of research, experiment, study or development
Explanation:
The MOD utilises a large volume of the Microsoft product set to support its business and military operations and relies upon the Microsoft Support services for support and assistance at all security tiers. Not being able to access these Microsoft specific services would represent a risk to national security in the event of an issue with the software. This includes the necessity to deploy Microsoft specialists on short notice to wherever is required, including overseas Bases and Theatre.
MOD is also a significant Customer in the UK who continue to run UK hosted Azure services in the cloud. The MOD requirement mandates data sovereignty and reliability and this non-negotiable requirement can only be supported by Microsoft for these services at this scale. Previously where MOD moved to O365 Cloud service, required regular and extensive access to the Microsoft product developers in the US in liaison with security cleared Microsoft Consultants in the UK was essential considering the critical and complexity which MOD represents as a customer.
The current requirements cannot be delivered without the direct access to Microsoft Support with the scale of the MOD’s product exploitation and the level of expertise required will not be available if we contract with a 3rd party consultancy. Furthermore, we have the evidence that by having direct links to product developers, we have been able to solve issues with the service that are unique to MOD’s future requirements & maintain national security. Direct connection to Microsoft product engineers is required to allow this to continue.
This contract also ensures the MOD is part of the Microsoft preview pilots for all Microsoft cloud offerings and only a handful of organisations around the world get early access to products before they are released. Having this early exposure gives the MOD the opportunity to influence and shape the products to suit our future defence needs: we will not get this access without a direct relationship with Microsoft.
Without Microsoft direct support the level of technical risk to MOD’s transition from existing monolithic contract arrangements would be too high to be appropriate for Defence. MOD is already using Microsoft expertise to mitigate these risks, in particular when leveraging expertise in the US product groups to assist us with this activity, again coupled with our on-site SMEs who provide the context of the often non-standard deployment of Microsoft technologies across Defence.
Latterly having one less commercial interface between the Microsoft Premier support and design consultancy has proven to deliver seamless interoperability, reduce risk and ensures that critical high-quality design work is delivered at pace and right first time.
Microsoft is the largest software provider to Defence; this support and design service is integral to supporting our business and military operations worldwide at all security tiers. In the case of a deployed we have previously used this contract to deploy Microsoft specialists to Operational theatres at short notice, Op HERRICK in Afghanistan, being an example.
four.1.8) Information about the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)
The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: No
Section five. Award of contract/concession
A contract/lot is awarded: Yes
five.2) Award of contract/concession
five.2.1) Date of conclusion of the contract
20 May 2022
five.2.2) Information about tenders
The contract has been awarded to a group of economic operators: No
five.2.3) Name and address of the contractor/concessionaire
Microsoft UK PLC
Microsoft Campus Building 1
Reading
RG6 1WG
Telephone
+44 1189093338
Country
United Kingdom
NUTS code
- UK - United Kingdom
Internet address
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/about/contact/
The contractor/concessionaire is an SME
No
five.2.4) Information on value of contract/lot/concession (excluding VAT)
Total value of the contract/lot/concession: £31,000,000
five.2.5) Information about subcontracting
The contract/lot/concession is likely to be subcontracted
Section six. Complementary information
six.3) Additional information
The Authority reserves the right to amend any condition related to security of information to reflect any changes in national law or government policy. If any contract documents are accompanied by instructions on safeguarding classified information (e.g. a Security Aspects Letter), the Authority reserves the right to amend the terms of these instructions to reflect any changes in national law or government policy, whether in respect of the applicable protective marking scheme, specific protective markings given, the aspects to which any protective marking applies, or otherwise. The link below to the Gov.uk website provides information on the Government Security Classification.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-security-classifications
six.4) Procedures for review
six.4.1) Review body
Ministry of Defence, Defence Digital
Spur B2, Bldg 405, MoD Corsham
Corsham
SN13 9NR
Country
United Kingdom