NZ Police network upgrade aims to boost mobility and the use of cloud services
New Zealand's Police force is embarking on a huge network upgrade, refreshing technology servicing over 300 sites.
Failure to address the renewal of the network infrastructure "will present a significant risk to NZ Police operations", documents state.
Police is seeking a "one stop shop" for its new Enterprise Communications Network (ECN) to replace the five network providers it currently uses.
Among other objectives, the project aims to upgrade network capacity, rationalise and refresh aging infrastructure and simplify network management.
"The ECN must cater for future innovation and delivery of major planned initiatives, as well as align to Police’s broader strategies for mobility, and agility for site relocation or commissioning," a request of information (ROI) issued this week states.
Upgrading the ECN is expected to deliver enhanced capability with increased bandwidth to speed up data delivery, and facilitate future mobility and cloud applications.
"Police presently faces challenges driven by its data centralisation strategy, and also the growing mobilisation of its workforce, increasing the need for high speed wireless connectivity," the ROI adds.
Police intends to engage a service provider to undertake an "architectural review" and develop a detailed design for the future ECN; establish a resilient core network and transition Police critical sites to that network; upgrade WAN circuits to required bandwidth and undertake a LAN hardware rationalisation and refresh.
Furthermore, mobile connectivity at all sites will be refreshed and network management simplified, while the ECN must also be sustainable and affordable - reduced operating costs will be a significant factor in evaluating proposals.
"Police expects this is most likely to be achieved through a combination of Police and service provider owned assets, with the service provider responsible for management of these assets," the ROI adds.
"We believe that affordability targets are unlikely to be met solely through ‘as-a-service’ commercial arrangements, however we are open to transition plans that will assist us to get to a full ‘as-a-service model’.
"We do not want proposals where the balance of asset ownership has not been considered."
Proposals which would result in Police continuing to manage multiple vendors and fail to deliver simplification in network management are also not desired, while support must be integrated through the Police service desk.
Delving deeper, Police is also seeking ways to deliver higher bandwidth to over 200 small sites with low bandwidth network connections.
Police is happy to explore telecommunications-as-a-service (TaaS) offerings and to hear how the TaaS providers can assist delivery of a full as-a-service offering.
