IT MANAGED SERVICE PROVIDER

OBJECTIVES:

The GPhC regulate pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacies in Great Britain. We work to assure and improve standards of care for people using pharmacy services. Our role is to protect the public and give them assurance that they will receive safe and effective care when using pharmacy services. We set standards for pharmacy professionals and pharmacies to enter and remain on our register.

The GPhC seek assurance that pharmacy professionals and pharmacies continue to meet our standards, including by inspecting pharmacies. We act to protect the public and to uphold public confidence in pharmacy if there are concerns about a pharmacy professional or pharmacy on our register.

Primary objectives for this tender are to on-board a Managed Service Provider (MSP) who will provide a fully managed stable, resilient and secure Azure environment and can help us in transforming some of our analytics solution. The provider will guide and support GPhC in leveraging advances made in technology and improve the service provided to GPhC customers.

Through our work, we help to promote professionalism, support continuous improvement and assure the quality and safety of pharmacy; GPhC is seeking qualified respondents to ideally provide a hybrid Azure managed service in support of its business operations and create sustainable relationships that meet the following strategic sourcing objectives:

- Performance Optimisation - Enable improvements to service delivery and customer experience both for internal and external customers, allowing better management of cost, risk and results.

- Agility / Speed - Implement an agile, responsive and scalable partnership with the organisation addressing their rapidly changing needs, lowering complexity and improving global delivery capabilities.

- Improved Relationship Management - Achieve clear and proactive account management with the flexibility of services to support future business requirements.

- Cost Control & Reduction - Effectively manage services to provide transparency with clear cost control with flexibility in consumption of services to allow funding of future IT requirements.

- Innovation - Partner with an MSP that will bring technology leadership in IT services and assist GPhC with becoming "faster followers;" enabling the adoption of better practices and solutions to improve business outcomes.

- Risk & Accountability - Proactively identify issues and themes that may have an impact on GPhC's business operations and service.

OVERVIEW OF THE REQUIREMENTS:

1. The estimated total value is £3-£4M and the contract term is 3 years with two options to extend for 1 year (3+1+1).

2. The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is undergoing a strategic migration to Microsoft Azure cloud services. Currently, we utilize two separate partners: one providing Managed Azure cloud services and another handling data centre operations, end-user computing, network security, and additional non-cloud services.

3. As our cloud transition progresses, with the majority expected to complete before new contract finalization, we require a comprehensive managed service from specialists in this domain. We seek a partnership that ensures reliability, performance, and security of our website and associated services to support our future growth and transformation journey. This relationship is vital to maintaining and enhancing GPhC's digital presence and ensuring continuous system availability for both customers and internal users.

4. The selected supplier will:

- Manage the transition from our two existing suppliers

- Take responsibility for remaining data centre systems

- Develop and execute a roadmap for complete cloud migration

- Provide specified resources to support GPhC IT team-managed projects

- Deliver a resilient hybrid Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform featuring automated provisioning, including:

- Hosting services

- Database management

- Runtime support

- Middleware management

- Operating system (OS) management

- Virtualization solutions

- Server maintenance

- Storage management

- Shared network and security services

5. Specific Responsibilities

The supplier will:

- Support and maintain the IaaS platform with regular patching and necessary upgrades

- Manage End User Computing services including desktop and mobile device management for approximately 300 users (desktop refresh planned for 2026)

- Comply with GPhC technology standards, governance requirements, and service expectations

- Facilitate seamless transition of current Azure tenants while continuously maintaining and optimizing environments

- Implement robust change and release management processes

- Establish a comprehensive governance framework covering both operational and strategic aspects, with continuous monitoring of SLAs/OLAs

- Ensure strong security measures, disaster recovery capabilities, and business continuity planning

- Provide support to GPhC development teams as needed

- Collaborate with GPhC Cyber Security team to maintain a secure environment and required security certifications

- Help GPhC maximize return on technology investments

- Foster innovation while ensuring GPhC solutions remain modern and responsive

- Provide expertise in infrastructure, security, desktop management, mobile device management, and other areas as requested

- Provide ad-hoc support/consultancy for the separate PaaS environment, with a view to future integration post-completion of this project.

6. Current Challenges to Address

- Limited flexibility in project resourcing

- Insufficient backup capacity in key technical areas

- Service management issues

- Sub-contractor management concerns