First Group seeks IT infrastructure suppliers

Several IT contracts are up for grabs at First Group

First Group is looking to outsource several elements of its IT set-up under contracts that could surpass £30m.

The transport firm is seeking a datacentre vendor to host and support several of its IT systems, which include back-office applications, engineering systems and front-office ticketing running on a mixture of Windows, Linux and Unix environments. Disaster recovery will also be a part of the three-year contract, which is paying around £10m.

A network communications supplier is also needed to provide, operate and support the firm’s wide area network (WAN) in the UK. The contract is worth around £10m and will see the possible expansion to voice on the network as well as extending to cover Europe and North America.

Another contract notice, worth approximately £5m, is related to the IT support and technical delivery of the firm’s distributed infrastructure. This will include the support of over 10,000 user devices, servers and local area network (LAN) infrastructure for over 630 UK sites.

A managed mail supplier is also part of the services required by the transport group, which requires the provision of collaborative services for 20,000 mailboxes including instant and mobile messaging. More collaborative services may be required under the deal, which is worth around £3m.

First is also looking for an IT service desk supplier to handle first line calls from end users. The firm will pay £5m in return for a round-the-clock operation, which will operate according to ITIL standards. The service desk will also support service requests for platforms including back-office applications as well as rail and bus operational systems.