Streamlining Procurement: Data Centre as a Service – Project Update
- 15
- Jun
We’ve been delighted with the discussion following my previous posting on the Data Centre as a Service (DCaaS) initiative. We have reviewed all the contributions and used many of them to improve the Sourcing Approach and Head Agreement. The revised documents are below. I have also included a summary of the questions and responses on the Head Agreement.
- Draft DCaaS Project Sourcing Approach DOC (119KB)
- Draft DCaaS Project Sourcing Approach PDF (235KB)
- Draft DCaaS Project Head Agreement DOC (293KB)
- Draft DCaaS Project Head Agreement PDF (160KB)
- Responses to questions about the Head Agreement from industry DOC (91KB)
- Responses to questions about the Head Agreement from industry PDF (165KB)
We have been putting a lot of thought into how to structure the Application for Inclusion (AFI) so that it remains simple, but also allows vendors to differentiate their services. The attached documentation provides detail about the proposed approach. I am seeking your comment which you can post below or provide to the team via email at datacentres@finance.gov.au by 29 June 2012.
We are also seeking your feedback on the proposed fields and characteristics of the DCaaS Service Catalogue. We seek input from industry on whether you consider our suggestions to be in line with industry standards and expectations. Your comments and suggestions will assist us in refining the catalogue.
- DRAFT DCaaS Service Fields DOC (43KB)
- DRAFT DCaaS Service Fields PDF (110KB)
- DRAFT DCaaS Vendor Fields DOC (38KB)
- DRAFT DCaaS Vendor Fields PDF (78KB)
To accommodate this additional round of consultation, we have pushed back the AFI release date until July 2012. I will formally announce the release of the AFI on the AGIMO Blog when it is published on Austender.
I look forward to your feedback.
John Sheridan
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For me personally it is great that it has been pushed back until July, thank you.
The documentation attached (Approach, Agreement and Head Agreement forms) are all looking good and will form a great foundation for the DCaaS initiative.
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Thanks Mark
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Just a few quick comments after reading the documents:
With Supplier details is the Service name suppose to be the brand/marketing entity for example “SuperCloud” or similar.
Would the Service description we a limited free text descriptive field.
Can Service Category and Service Sub Category have a parent child relationship as I can see for example Seasonal Peak Bursting being different under say SaaS than it would be under IaaS.
Also in Sub Categories is it possible to add Back up as a Service, Hybrid Cloud, Replication and Virtual Data Centres.
With Service scalability we believe that Self Provisioning should also be included in title we could envisage a Department signing up for services and wishing to add and terminate services on an as needs basis without recourse to the service provider.
With Hosting Site is Supplier and Agency meant to represent Hybrid.
With Data Centre Details why is the Country column necessary? Is all Government data ...
... to be stored in Australia?
Regards
Paul.
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Thanks for your interest Paul.
The Service Name is intended to be what the supplier calls their particular service. The Service Description field will be able to accommodate a significant volume of text.
We are not currently planning to link the relationships between service category and sub-categories as some service sub-categories will apply to more than one category and linking them may create confusion. That said, you make a useful point and, in the interest of good design and normalisation of data, we’ll check further.
I can see reasons for including “Back up as a Service”. I’ll need more information in regard to why “Hybrid Cloud”, “Replication” and “Virtual Data Centres” can’t already fit within other service sub-categories. Perhaps you could post more information regarding your views on this?
In regard to Service scalability, our intention was to have this catered for in the Customer Administrator Only field. In a consumption pricing model, if services aren’t being used – why would there be an invoice?
The country column is required for data centre details to allow agencies to make an informed decision on the services they source and appropriate hosting arrangements. DSD cloud guidance explains why and how agencies should make these decisions. As an example, AGIMO’s website Data.gov.au, is partially hosted overseas as all the data is publicly available.
Regards
John
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Hi John,
I think this is a great start to the MUL. One example where there may be a Customer Administrator Only but still charges:
Customer wants to self-service and intends to administer the service themselves but wants fee for monitoring, oncall support as a backup to their self-administration, etc
Not sure if you have thought of how this fits into the Service Pricing or how this option is available to be articulated.
Regards,
Jason
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Is the total value of all work orders an agencies has with a supplier restricted to $80k? Or each work order restricted to $80k?
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Hi Laurie
Thanks for your interest. The proposed approach is to limit each work order to $80k.
Regards
John
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Thank you for the opportunity to provide further comment on the draft DCaaS Project Sourcing Approach and Draft DCaaS Project Head Agreement. Your comments against our previous response have been helpful.
Our technical team have reviewed the revised project sourcing document and have no feedback to provide at this time. Again, we believe we have a very strong capability and we look forward to the opportunity to discuss our key market differentiators at the appropriate time.
Our legal team have reviewed the revised Head Agreement and are grateful for the constructive feedback you have provided to our previous comments. The only key issues we would raise at this juncture are as follows:
1. Clause 9.2 (uncapped liability) should not extend to ‘wilfully wrong acts or omissions’; and
2. Clause 16.4 (payment for termination for convenience) the parties should be able to agree a cancellation fee (being a reasonable estimate of reasonable costs). ...
... The cancellation fee might, quite reasonably, be greater than one month’s fees.
Since these recommended changes are outside our usual contracts compliance policy, pease note that should they be accepted by you, we would still require corporate approval to enter into a Deed.
Kind regards
Jodine Bishop
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Thanks for your ongoing contributions, Jodine. We’ll take your points into consideration as we finalise this work.
Regards
John
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John
I’m trying to understand the nature of the price information you have asked Vendors to supply and have a few questions.
Service levels and price are directly related. Usually, the more stringent the SLAs the higher the price.
A particular Agency will have a requirement for a specific service with a specific set of SLAs. Given this information, a Vendor will be able to provide the Agency with a price for that set of requirements.
In the document the combination of Service Category, Service Sub-category, Service Availability, Scheduled Outages, Service Hours and Security classification is quite large. It is possible that every combination will have a different price. In fact, an Agency may include additional SLAs that are not in the Vendor supplied information when negotiating a price for a specific work order.
My first question, then, is what price or prices do you expect the Vendor to include when submitting their data ...
... for inclusion on the MUL? The form seems to indicate a maximum price. Is this a single price or one for each potential combination?
A second question is, what prices will AGIMO be monitoring? In line 219 it states that AGIMO will be monitoring price fluctuations. Which prices are these? Those in the catalogue, those in the work orders, or both?
Third question: As the only really meaningful price data would seem to be in work orders, will these prices and related SLAs be made available to Agencies and/or Vendors?
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Hi Bernard,
Thanks for your interest and questions. I’ll answer for John.
Yes, service levels and pricing are inter-related. The closer the match between a service and the agency requirements, the more likely an agency will seek a quote from the supplier. Suppliers may request to include a service and offer many combinations of SLAs and corresponding pricing relating to their service. The service catalogue can cater for this, the vendor would supply multiple service forms in their Application For Inclusion, one for each unique service offering. Alternatively, the vendor might just supply one service with the maximum SLA and maximum price.
AGIMO will liaise with agencies on their requirements and passing requests for quotes to Suppliers. AGIMO will then review the quotes and assist with the signing of Work Orders. AGIMO will also be managing the MUL, reviewing all update requests, which will include pricing. ...
...
Signed Work Orders will be available to agencies through GovDex. Were appropriate, agencies will also supply limited contract information on AusTender. As previously stated, the MUL will be reviewed after 12 months. AGIMO will review the usage of the MUL and may publish some information regarding the contracts, probably total contract value, term, service used, vendor and agency. The price/unit would not be published.
Regards
Mundi
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This is a great initiative!
However, I think there’s an unintended consequence of the two references requirement.
Say you wanted to develop a NEW SaaS app _specifically_ for the Commonwealth Government, to meet unique need.
Perhaps with the lower cost of cloud infrastructure and the lower sales costs from the new MUL, developing such an app now becomes attractive.
If you started it afresh, you may want to put it in a fresh company: limited liability, no financial baggage, more flexibility to raise new capital, some software tool licenses are cheaper (esp Microsoft ones).
But then you couldn’t get two references.
So the policy actually discourages the development of new SaaS apps to serve Commonwealth Government specifically… which is actually presumably is something you want to encourage.
What about doing a company director criminal convictions and bankruptcy check instead and raising the application fee?
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Thanks Bob
I’ve explained in response to Kristoffer below, as DCaaS isn’t mandatory, the limitations you outline just mean that this isn’t the procurement vehicle for unproven services.
On the question of references, I don’t the bona fides of the director(s) are sufficient to reduce the risks to the level that would warrant the use of DCaaS. But there are plenty if other ways to procure such services.
Regards
John
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I agree with Bob, the two references rule unfairly rules out those vendors that have new innovative products & services that they wish to bring to market.
Assuming that said product is designed specifically for Government, then there appears to be no way for said product or service to get onto the MUL as no government customer would have already used the product to provide the references in the first place.
As Bob says, maybe look at instituting some other way of validating that the responding vendors are legitimate operators. Do you really want to rule out existing vendors with new offerings that can deliver real savings to Government?
Regards,
Kristoffer Sheather
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Hi Kristoffer
DCaaS is not designed to be mandatory. Agencies can choose to procure under other existing or new arrangements. While the conditions for DCaaS are tight, that’s because they are designed to streamline procurement when the risks are relatively low. In the case of an unproven provider or service, the risks are likely to be higher and thus warrant the use of a more traditional procurement vehicle.
Thanks for your comment,
Regards
John
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Hi John,
Any update on when the AFI will be published.
Paul.
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for your interest and query.
As way of introduction I am the assistant secretary in charge of the DCaaS project, We are still aiming for the AFI to be released by the end of July.
Regards
Mundi
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Hi Mundi,
Thanks for the update.
Paul.
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Hi
Any update to when the AFI will be published?
Thanks
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It was published on the blog on 31 July. See further up the index.
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