On 29 April 2015 the Invitation for Bids (IFB) for one of the major contract of NATO's IT modernization (ITM) project was sent to industry. The effort is valued at over €170M-plus, including follow-on Contractor Logistics Support.
This singular event represents 'the end of the beginning' of the project, moving the effort from the planning phase into execution. This event marks the beginning of a five and a half year journey that will transform the NATO infrastructure and put it on a modern, sustainable, and efficient footing for the years to come. The changes introduced will be fundamental and move the NATO from a posture of localized service provision to one of centralized provision.
"The release of the IFB package to industry is a major milestone in the journey to a new, cloud-based, infrastructure for NATO. It will affect not only the Agency and how it delivers services but also how our customers consume them. It marks the start of a transition from an old twentieth century IT posture to a modern, future looking Cloud-based approach," said Koen Gijsbers, NCI Agency General Manager.
The statement of work that forms part of the IFB package (which is over 500 pages in length) represents many person-years of effort and includes input from a broad cross section of elements across the Agency. It provides requirements to industry regarding what NATO is trying to achieve across a range of services, without prescribing the solution that it is seeking. It has been designed from the outset with a services paradigm in mind, defining the services and service levels that the NCI Agency must deliver using the new infrastructure, but without constraining industry from innovating and bringing their best ideas to the solution. There will be considerable emphasis in the evaluation to ensure that the selected contractor's solution represents the best value across the full life-cycle.