Australian Museum seeks expressions of interest to rebuild compute environment

The Australian Museum is seeking expressions of interest for the provision of enterprise ICT infrastructure and managed services to support it across its property portfolio - which includes extensive and widespread locations where employees engage in scientific research, administration and collection management.

The scope for the EOI, which closes on April 27, includes the supply of enterprise compute and storage infrastructure, along with infrastructure deployment and migration, and ongoing managed services and operational support.

The Museum said the successful supplier will be engaged on the Digital NSW ICT Purchasing Framework ICT Agreement, which will be structured with an initial three-year term plus two optional one-year extensions.

Its current environment is characterised by a fully leased and consumption-based infrastructure model delivered by an incumbent managed services provider, as well as a month-to-month contractual arrangement and limited disaster recovery capability.

Other features of its current environment include separate corporate and physical security infrastructure arrangements, multiple service providers and duplicated connectivity, which has contributed to excessive costs, and a data centre presence at Equinix’s Alexandria facility and Global Switch’s Ultimo location.

Where it wants to be is having Australian Museum-owned compute and storage infrastructure, a competitively procured managed services provider, and a two-site architecture supporting primary operations and disaster recovery.

It also wants to consolidate corporate and physical security platforms into a shared infrastructure environment, as well as continued integration with Microsoft Azure services.