pre-bid queries response final queries_14_12_2016.pdf · advantages of migration to cloud. repeated...

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Section (Name & No.) Statement as per Tender Document/As perCorrigendum

Query by Bidder Reason for Query Response

1 Additional Clause The CSP should provide API management features as a native capability ; Itshould provide real-time analytics and enable trend identifications on the usage ofthe published API’s ;Should provide a single place to manage all APIs

The cloud solution expected to scale to 30 Million users , only APIintegration application with cloud infrastructure would guaranteetight integration and automatic scalability , hence recommending touse industry standard , open RESTful APIs to be available from CSP.

Please refer corrigendum for informationon PaaS related services



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4 20 Section 3.6: Schedule ofEvents

Phase I: Provisioning of: Within 2 months from theissuance of LoAa. Data Center and DRb. IT Infrastructure installation in Racks of DC & DRc. Network Conectivity

The basic provisioning of the cloud services (before the application gets deployed)should be within two weeks from the issuance of LoA.

One of the key benefits of moving to cloud computing is the speed ofprovisioning without havnig to wait for months for procurement,deployment and configuration of the underlying hardware.

Public Cloud infrastructure is already available with all the cloudservice providers and AICTE should leverage the same to reduce theproject timelines and make the SWAYAM available to students at theearliest when possible.

Giving two months for simple provisioning of resources will defeat theadvantages of migration to cloud.

Bidders can propose 2 weeks for thisactivity

5 53 Section 7.4: WorkCompletion Timelines &Payment Terms

Provisioning of a) Data Centre & DR b) IT Infrastructureinstallation in Racks of DC&DR c) Network Connectivity

Within 2 months from the issuance of LOA


One of the key benefits of moving to cloud computing is the speed ofprovisioning without havnig to wait for months for procurement,deployment and configuration of the underlying hardware.

Public Cloud infrastructure is already available with all the cloudservice providers and AICTE should leverage the same to reduce theproject timelines and make the SWAYAM available to students at theearliest when possible.

Giving two months for simple provisioning of resources will defeat theadvantages of migration to cloud.

Repeated

6 53 Section 7.4: WorkCompletion Timelines &Payment Terms

Provisioning of a) Data Centre & DR b) IT Infrastructureinstallation in Racks of DC&DR c) Network Connectivity

Within 2 months from the issuance of LOA


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7 31 Section 4.3: Pre-Qualification Criteria for CSP

The CSP must be operating in multiple Data Centres inIndia. The DC and the DR should be in different seismiczones.

Letter from authorized signatory on the letter head ofCSP mentioning the address of the proposed Data centre(DC) and Disaster Recovery (DR).

"The CSP must be operating in multiple Data Centres in India and the datacenters should be in different physical locations. "

Letter from authorized signatory on the letter head of CSP confirming thepresence of the Datacenter(s) within India.

CSP may be providing cloud services from either one or multiple datacenters but the same are architected differently by different CSPs andare not always in different seismic zones.

Having a clause asking the same CSP to be operating from multipledata centers in different seismic zones may become restrictive.

As a security policy, the address of the DC is not publicly revealed.SInce the requirement is to confirm the presence of the DC withinIndia, the same may be taken to verify the compliance against the PQcriteria.

The Disaster Recovery architecture (active-active or active-passive)may be left to the bidder to meet the AICTE requirement of having afully functional DR in case of disaster and provide consistent userexperience.

AWS data centers are built in clusters in various global regions. Alldata centers are online and serving customers; no data center is“cold.” In case of failure, automated processes move customer datatraffic away from the affected area. Core applications are deployed inan N+1 configuration, so that in the event of a data center failure,there is sufficient capacity to enable traffic to be loadbalanced to theremaining sites. AWS provides customers the flexibility to placeinstances and store data within multiple geographic regions as well asacross multiple Availability Zones within each region. EachAvailability Zone is designed as an independent failure zone. This

No change

8 25 4.2 Pre-qualification Criteria for Managed Service Provider(MSP) - 5)The MSP should have managed or managingthe IT infrastructure for Data Centre /Cloud services toat least3 clients (Private/PSU/Central Govt/State Govt. or anyotherOrganization or agencies) in India during last threeFinancial Years (2013-14, 2014-15 & 2015-16)

1) This is public sector rfp hence request you to consider only public sectorexperience.

This will help in selecting MSP with strong alignment with Govt/PSUbusiness.

No Change

9 62 7.11 Indemnity A broad indemnity has been asked. Indemnity should be limited to third partyclaims for bodily injury and death, damage to tangible property and IPRinfringement. IPR infringement indemnity will be passed through so far as CSP'sand third party products and services are concerned.

No Change

Pre-Bid queries and responses

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10 62 7.11 Indemnity A broad indemnity has been asked. Indemnity should be limited to third partyclaims for bodily injury and death, damage to tangible property and IPRinfringement. IPR infringement indemnity will be passed through so far as CSP'sand third party products and services are concerned.

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a) Copy of Client certificate, work order, completioncertificate or extract from the contract mentioning thescope of work

a) Copy of Client certificate, work order, completion certificate or extract from thecontract mentioning the scope of work or public case studies / references from theCSP.

Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

And since businesses leverage cloud for a variety of workloadsincluding the sensitive workloads, CSPs are typically not allowed topublicly disclose the names as a security policy unless explicitlyallowed by the customer.

Even when AICTE leverages the CSP services, CSP will not be able todisclose that SWAYAM is leveraging a particular CSP because of theconfidentiality and security clauses.

Clause changed.

Please refer corrigendum

12 32 5.3.2. Cloud Service ProviderCompliance under Section5.3 Bidders compliance toTechnical RequirementSpecifications

Bidders experience of provisioning Infrastructure as aService (IaaS) on their Cloud for atleast 5 clients formPrivate/PSU/Central Govt/State Govt. or any otherOrganisation or agencies in India or Globally

a) Copy of Client certificate, work order, completion certificate or extract from thecontract mentioning the scope of work or public case studies / references from theCSP.

Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

And since businesses leverage cloud for a variety of workloadsincluding the sensitive workloads, CSPs are typically not allowed topublicly disclose the names as a security policy unless explicitlyallowed by the customer.

Even when AICTE leverages the CSP services, CSP will not be able todisclose that SWAYAM is leveraging a particular CSP because of theconfidentiality and security clauses.

No change


a) Cloud Service Provider should provide a self-signedcertificate on their letter head from authorized signatoryin case the datacenter facility is owned or providedatacenter facility vendor signed certificate forcontracted capacity for the number of racks

a) In case the racks are leased from a datacenter facility partner, providedatacenter facility vendor signed certificate for contracted capacity for the numberof racks.

Otherwise, Cloud Service Provider should provide a self-signed certificate on theirletter head from authorized signatory

CSPs may or may not own the real estate or the building but use anexisting building & physical infrastructure to setup the cloud services.

Data Centre can be owned or contracted,but CSP should have complete control onits infrastructure

14 54 7.5(1) Provisioning of a) Data Centre & DR b) IT Infrastructureinstallation in Racks of DC&DR c) Network Connectivitya) Within two months - Nil b) For every 7 days of delay5% of QP. c) Delay of 30 days - 10% of QP d) Beyond 45days - 50% of QP. The Bidder would be required toprovide proper justification for the delay. If AICTE feelsthat the justification provided by the Bidder is notcredible, the contract may be terminated.

a) Within two months - Nil b) For every 7 days of delay 1% of QP. c) Delay of 30days - 2% of QP d) Beyond 45 days - 5% of QP. The Bidder would be required toprovide proper justification for the delay. If AICTE feels that the justificationprovided by the Bidder is not credible, the contract may be terminated.

These penalty clause are very hard and must be relaxed No Change

15 14 Section 3.1: Design,provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud

Additional Clauses a. IAM: Bidder should provision Identity and Access Management (IAM) servicesfor fine grained access control that enables the bidder to securely control access tocloud services and resources. The IAM should allow creation and management ofCSP users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access tocloud resources; multi-factor authentication for highly privileged users

b. Monitoring Tools: The bidder should provision monitoring tools that willenable collection and tracking metrics, collection and monitoring log files, setalarms, and automatically react to changes in the provisioned resources. Themonitoring tools should be able to monitor resources such as compute and otherresources to gain system-wide visibility into resource utilization, applicationperformance, and operational health.

c. Governance and Compliance: Able to define guidelines for provisioning andconfiguring cloud resources and then continuously monitor compliance withthose guidelines. Ability to choose from a set of pre-built rules based on commonbest practices or custom rules (e.g., ensure Storage volumes are encrypted,Compute instances are properly tagged, and Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) areattached to instances) and continuously monitor configuration changes to thecloud resources and provides a new dashboard to track compliance status.

d. Audit Trail: Audit Trail of the CSP account activity to enable security analysis,resource change tracking, and compliance auditing.

Enabling the suggested features will allow AICTE / MHRD to controlaccess to the underlying cloud services, monitor the resource usage,maintain the audit trail and monitor the compliance to the definedrules and maintain the strategic control.

Such an audit trail and monitoring will immensely help duringtransition / exit management.

Already mentioned in different clauses likein-built logging and audit, Selfprovisioning etc.

16 12 2.1 Project Background The cost provided by the Bidder on per item per monthbasis will also be applicable for provisioning of theminimum requirement which would be communicatedto the Bidder after on-boarding and the Bidder would berequired to do the provisioning accordingly

Additional clarity needed. Is AICTE commiting to provisioning of minimumrequirements and that the efforts/costs for this will be based on Unit pricingprovided?

No minimum commitment, paymentbased on actual usage only. We have givedetails of existing Dev & Test environmentalong with indicative sizing and projectedusers in 3 years.

17 12 2.1 Project Background The cost provided by the Bidder on per item per monthbasis will also be applicable for provisioning of theminimum requirement which would be communicatedto the Bidder after on-boarding and the Bidder would berequired to do the provisioning accordingly

Additional clarity needed. Is AICTE commiting to provisioning of minimumrequirements and that the efforts/costs for this will be based on Unit pricingprovided?

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18 19 Clause (v) under 3.4:Provisioning Cloud servicesfor additional quantities atproposed rate

AICTE reserves the right to scale down and scale up theIT infrastructure. The payment would be made onlyon the actual usage of the IT infrastructure as per therates provided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

AICTE reserves the right to scale down and scale up the cloud resources. Thepayment would be made only on the actual usage of the cloud services as perthe rates provided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

Accepted

19 19 Clause (v) under 3.4:Provisioning Cloud servicesfor additional quantities atproposed rate

AICTE reserves the right to scale down and scale up theIT infrastructure. The payment would be made onlyon the actual usage of the IT infrastructure as per therates provided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

AICTE reserves the right to scale down and scale up the cloud resources. Thepayment would be made only on the actual usage of the cloud services as perthe rates provided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

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20 12 Introduction During the currency of engagement same has to beprocured by bidder at rates agreed upon by AICTE

AICTE will pay additional amount to Bidder to procure these licences ? Yes. The amount will be paid to the bidderby AICTE.

21 53 7.4 Work CompletionTimelines & Payment Terms

AICTE will release the payment within 30 days ofsubmission of valid invoice subject to the condition thatinvoice and all supporting documents produced are inorder and work is performed as per the scope of theproject and meeting the SLA Criteria.

AICTE will release the payment within 30 days of invoice date subject to thecondition that invoice and all supporting documents produced are in order andwork is performed as per the scope of the project and meeting the SLA Criteria.Any late payment will bear interest @ 2% per month.

As per industry standards. No Change


AICTE will release the payment within 30 days ofsubmission of valid invoice subject to the condition thatinvoice and all supporting documents produced are inorder and work is performed as per the scope of theproject and meeting the SLA Criteria.

AICTE will release the payment within 30 days of invoice date subject to thecondition that invoice and all supporting documents produced are in order andwork is performed as per the scope of the project and meeting the SLA Criteria.Any late payment will bear interest @ 2% per month.

As per industry standards. Repeated

23 55 7.6 SLA-“Uptime” shall mean the time period for which theIT Infrastructure Solution along with specified services /components with specified technical and servicestandards are available for users in all in-scopeApplications across the AICTE application landscape.Uptime, in percentage, of any component (Non IT andIT) can be calculated as : Uptime = {1- [(SystemDowntime) / (Total Time – Planned MaintenanceTime)]} * 100

Application should be out of scope of MSP and it must be in the scope ofapllication vendor

Clause changed.

24 23 3.9 Responsibility Matrix (point 14 - Data Integrity test) Application vendor should provide the Data Integrity tests & validate the sameduring testing.

Agreed.

Clause deleted25 15 3.1 Design, Provisioning of

IT Infrastructure and setupof Cloud

xi. The SLA for the replication of data will be attributedto the bidder. The RPO during disaster recovery shall be<= 30 Minutes and RTO shall be <=2 Hours

Are the RTO and RPO values for Data replication only or are they inclusive of theApplication Recovery? What is the expected RTO and RPO requirements forreplication of data?

RPO refers to the amount of data loss thatan organization can survive in case ofdisaster.RTO would be the time the organizationcan survive before the services arerestored. RTO would include theapplications being restored whereas RPOcould be for data.

26 15 3.1 Design, Provisioning ofIT Infrastructure and setupof Cloud


Are the RTO and RPO values for Data replication only or are they inclusive of theApplication Recovery? What is the expected RTO and RPO requirements forreplication of data?

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27 55 7.6 It is mentioned that MHRD MOOC application has beenintegrated with Akamai CDN (Content DeliveryNetwork) for better end user experience. The Biddershall be required to integrate the Cloud Services with theexisting CDN. / Service Level Management

As the overall cloud solution will have dependencies on Akamai, how the SLA willbe calculated in case of any downtime/or performance issues due to Akamaisetup.

Yes, the bidder will have to integrate itstool with the tool provided by Akamai CDNfor monitoring purposes on behalf ofAICTE.

Please refer to corrigendum on MSP rolesand responsibilities and details regardingAkamai CDN.

28 10.4 Commericial Sheet Azure licensing cost how will the payment be released to Bidder , is it monthly orquarterly ?

Payments related to operation andmaintenance phase will be made quarterly

29 138 10.4 Commericial Sheet Azure licensing cost if any overage how will the payout to bidder be done ? On actuals and as per usage30 25 4.2 Letter from Statutory Auditors on their letter head

mentioning the annual revenue from IT infrastructureservices

Balance Sheet or Letter from Chartered Accountant/ Statutory Auditors on theirletter head mentioning the annual revenue from IT infrastructure services

No Change

31 38 6.Instructions tothe Bidders Bid Security/ Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) Bid Security value is too high. This will block a huge cash flow of Bidder and the same should bereconsidered

No Change. Earnest Money Deposit(EMD) for an amount ofINR.1,00,00,000/-can also be submittedin form of Bank Guarantee or DemandDraft (DD) from anyNationalized/Scheduled bank

32 138 10.4Commercial sheet format forreference

Bidde proposes tansition cost will be paid on completion of respective parameters.Request for commercial template to specify transition cost separately.

Cost for migration activity has been askedin the Commercials and this will be paidalong with the first quarters bill to thebidder

33 138 10.4Commercial sheet format forreference

Bidde proposes tansition cost will be paid on completion of respective parameters.Request for commercial template to specify transition cost separately.

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34 135 10.2 "Best Price" offer Letter - “I/ We do hereby furtherundertake that, we have offered the best prices for thesubject supply/ work as per the present market rates

Bidder can't provide such best price undertaking. Please have this deleted. Clause deleted.


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35 135 10.2 "Best Price" offer Letter - “I/ We do hereby furtherundertake that, we have offered the best prices for thesubject supply/ work as per the present market rates

Bidder can't provide such best price undertaking. Please have this deleted. Repeated

36 Additional Clause to beadded

Bidder seeks right to suspned/ terminate services in case of delay in payment ofundisputed invoice.

No Change

37 Additional Clause to beadded

Bidder seeks right to suspned/ terminate services in case of delay in payment ofundisputed invoice.

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38 14 Clause (iii) under Section3.1: Design, provisioning ofIT infrastructure and setupof Cloud

The Bidder shall be responsible for migration of theMOOC application on the Cloud infrastructure.Necessary support for its migration would be providedby the application vendor of AICTE.

Bidder shall be responsible for deployment of the MOOC application on theCloud infrastructure. Necessary support for its migration would be provided bythe application vendor of AICTE.

Any changes to the application should be the responsibility of theapplication vendor and the deployment of the application on cloudshould be the responsibility of the bidder.

Yes, the understanding is correct

39 14 Clause (vii) under Section3.1: Design, provisioning ofIT infrastructure and setupof Cloud

The Bidder will be responsible for provisioning ofrequisite network infrastructure (including switches,routers and firewalls) to ensure accessibility of theservers as per defined SLA’s.

Bidder will be responsible for provisioning a logically dedicated cloud and supportNetwork and security with dedicated virtual firewall and virtual load balancerintegration for auto-scale functions.

Clause has to be suitabily modified to reflect the procurement of cloudservices.




Bidder will be responsible for provisioning a logically dedicated cloud and supportNetwork and security with dedicated virtual firewall and virtual load balancerintegration for auto-scale functions.

Clause has to be suitabily modified to reflect the procurement of cloudservices.

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41 23 3.9 Migration of application from existingcloud setup to new cloud

Can AICTE share the Architecture of the applications in questions along with thetechnologies these are made on? Please also confirm if AICTE can provide somedocumentation for aiding this task to the successful bidder?

Information regarding MOOC applicationand the logical application architecturehas been provided. Please refer to Section11 of the RFP.

42 114 9.6 Integrated media streaming services for on-the-flyconversion ofthe video content to multiple video formats required forvariousdevices: MP4 (HTML5 Web Browser), HLS (iOS andAndroid),HDS (Flash/ Adobe AIR), Smooth Streaming (iOS andWindows), MPEG-DASH (Windows). This will insureconsumption of video across PC (Windows/Mac),Android, iOSand Windows devices.

Can AICTE share the Architecture of the integrated media streaming services. Please refer to the application architecturein the RFP and the corrigendum for PaaSservices

43 34 5.5 Project Team and theirCV's

Can the Bidders provide indicative Staffing details. It is difficult to commitrespurces at such an early stage and the actual availability of staff is contingentupon their current/planned work

Bidder would be required to size the onsiteand remote team deployment in theimplementation and maintenance phase.Minimum number of such proposedresources shall be committed by the bidderin their bid.

44 137 Section 10.3: CommercialBid Format & Instructions

It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done based on 25 Lac users with 2%concurrency as provided in the Commercial sheet. TheBidder has to provide per item per month rates for VM’s,Storage and Services for Development, Testing, UAT,Migration activity and Production environment. The costbased on the usage per item per month shall remainuniform for the entire duration of the contract and shallalso remain uniform when scaling up and scaling downof the requirements.

Commercial format should seek prices (along with the unit prices) for minimumrequirement and on-demand compute separately.

Cloud services, as with the other services, provide multiple pricingmodels for the customer to take advantage and lower the total cost ofservices.

Where there is predictability in demand, providing the minimumrequirement will enable AICTE to take advantage of the lower unitcost of the resources. Any additional requirement of resources to meetthe actual demand (that could be higher than minimum) will be metthrough auto-scaling to ensure the performance SLAs of theapplication. The unit costs for additional auto-scaled resources mayalso be discovered as part of the commercial bid that will be used forresources consumed over and above the minimum specifiedrequirement.

Keeping the demand completely uncertain will lead to higher overallunit costs and unnecessary higher payments from the government.

No Change

45 138 Section 10.4: CommercialSheet Format for reference

Section 10.4: Commercial Sheet Format for reference Commercial format should seek prices (along with the unit prices) for minimumrequirement and on-demand compute separately.




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It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done based on 25 Lac users with 2%concurrency as provided in the Commercial sheet. TheBidder has to provide per item per month rates for VM’s,Storage and Services for Development, Testing, UAT,Migration activity and Production environment. The costbased on the usage per item per month shall remainuniform for the entire duration of the contract and shallalso remain uniform when scaling up and scaling downof the requirements.

Commercial format should seek prices (along with the unit prices) for minimumrequirement and on-demand compute separately.




Repeated

47 138 Section 10.4: CommercialSheet Format for reference

Section 10.4: Commercial Sheet Format for reference Commercial format should seek prices (along with the unit prices) for minimumrequirement and on-demand compute separately.




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PQ: iii. Conform to at least Tier III standard, certifiedunder TIA 942 or Uptime Institute certifications by a 3rdparty

b) CSP to provide a self-signed certificate on their letterhead from authorized signatory mentioning the Datacentre facilities at the Data centre along with copy offollowing certificates:- i) Data Centre Tier III certificate,certified under TIA 942 or Uptime Institutecertifications by a 3rd party ii) Cloud platform certificatefor the latest version of ISO 27001 (year 2013, by acompetent auditing authority iii) Copy of certificateissues by third party for periodic inspections/audits

Conform to at least Tier III standard, preferably certified under TIA 942 orUptime Institute certifications by a 3rd party"

The Bidder is required to self-certify on their company letter head by AuthorizedSignatory regarding the Tier classification of the proposed Data Centres

Even as per the Provisional Empanelment RFP published by MeitY,the pre-qualification criteria is stated as:

"iii. Conform to at least Tier III standard, preferably certified underTIA 942 or Uptime Institute certifications by a 3rd party"

This was phrased that way keeping in mind that while the DataCenters align to Tier III standards, they don't typically get certified inorder to have more flexibility to expand and improve performance.

Even as per the current RFP, under the technical evaluation criteria aself-certificate is being requested. "Page 31: The Bidder is required toself-certify on their company letter head by Authorized Signatoryregarding the Tier classification of the proposed Data Centres"Request AICTE to keep requirement consistent even for the PQcompliance.

A self-certificate indicating the alignment to Tier III standard wasaccepted during the Provisional Empanelment Process.

No Change

49 Additional clause CSP should use best practice procedures and a wiping solution that is NIST 800-88 compliant

Ensuring privacy of the data is critical on the cloud , any storagedevice from datacenter should be safely destroyed as per industrystandard NIST 800-808

No change

50 54 7.5(2) Migration of the application on the new Cloud environmentDeployment of application on new cloud should be responsibilty of MSP jointlywith application vendor , Time period should be 3 months


Migration should be completed within onemonth after Provisioning ofa) Data Centre & DRb) IT Infrastructure installation inRacks of DC&DRc) Network ConnectivityMigration is the joint responsibility of MSPand CSP and Application vendor willprovide necessary support

51 20 Clause (v) under Section 3.5:Project Planning andManagement

Migration Plan: The Bidder will be required to submit amigration plan to AICTE for migrating the existingapplication on its Cloud. Necessary support will beprovided by the application vendor of AICTE.

Deployment Plan: The Bidder will be required to submit a deployment planto AICTE for deploying the existing application on its Cloud. Necessary supportwill be provided by the application vendor of AICTE.



52 20 Clause (v) under Section 3.5:Project Planning andManagement

Migration Plan: The Bidder will be required to submit amigration plan to MHRD for migrating the existingapplication on its Cloud. Necessary support will beprovided by the application vendor of MHRD.

Deployment Plan: The Bidder will be required to submit a deployment plan toMHRD for deploying the existing application on its Cloud. Necessary support willbe provided by the application vendor of MHRD.


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53 19 3.4 Annexure II Section 9.8 specifies, indicative quantitiesand compute for IT Infrastructure components foravailing cloud services

Does MHRD committed to avail the volume indicate in Annexure II ? No. It will be based on actual usage.

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xi. The SLA for the replication of data will be attributedto the bidder.

Does this mean that the DR as a Service requirement from Bidder (MSP and CSP)point of view is for replication only and excludes any application or systemdependencies? Please clarify.

Please refer to corrigendum for roles andresponsibilities of MSP


xi. The SLA for the replication of data will be attributedto the bidder.

Does this mean that the DR as a Service requirement from Bidder (MSP and CSP)point of view is for replication only and excludes any application or systemdependencies? Please clarify.

Repeated

56 72 7.20 (v) During the exit management period, the Bidder shall useits best efforts to deliver the services.

During the exit management period, the Bidder shall use its reasonable effortsto deliver the services.

No Change

57 72 7.20 (v) During the exit management period, the Bidder shall useits best efforts to deliver the services.

During the exit management period, the Bidder shall use its reasonable effortsto deliver the services.

Repeated

58 30 5.2 Technical EvaluationCriteria

Each Technical Bid will be assigned a technical score outof a maximum of 100 marks. Only the bidders who getan aggregate Technical score of 70% or more will qualifyfor commercial evaluation stage. Failing to secureminimum marks shall lead to technical rejection of theBid and Bidder.1 Bidders compliance to Technical RequirementSpecifications - 302 Bidders Experience - Client Citations-153 Project Team (CVs)- 204 Quality of the Proposal -155 Technical presentation -20

Each Technical Bid will be assigned a technical score out of a maximum of 100marks. Only the bidders who get an aggregate Technical score of 70% or more willqualify for commercial evaluation stage. Failing to secure minimum marks shalllead to technical rejection of the Bid and Bidder.1 Bidders compliance to Technical Requirement Specifications - 702 Bidders Experience - Client Citations-103 Project Team (CVs)- 54 Quality of the Proposal -55 Technical presentation & Demonstration -10

Request for the change of the point to increase more weightage onTechnical Requirement specification to 70% at least. Also request toinclude demonstration of capabilities asked along with presentation

Weightage has been changed for Technicalevaluation.






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Repeated


Each Technical Bid will be assigned a technical score outof a maximum of 100 marks. Only the bidders who getan aggregate Technical score of 70% or more will qualifyfor commercial evaluation stage. Failing to secureminimum marks shall lead to technical rejection of theBid and Bidder. 1 Bidders compliance to TechnicalRequirement Specifications - 30 2 Bidders Experience -Client Citations-15 3 Project Team (CVs)- 20 4 Quality ofthe Proposal -15 5 Technical presentation -20

Each Technical Bid will be assigned a technical score out of a maximum of 100marks. Only the bidders who get an aggregate Technical score of 70% or more willqualify for commercial evaluation stage. Failing to secure minimum marks shalllead to technical rejection of the Bid and Bidder. 1 Bidders compliance toTechnical Requirement Specifications - 70 2 Bidders Experience - Client Citations-10 3 Project Team (CVs)- 5 4 Quality of the Proposal -5 5 Technical presentation& Demonstration -10


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62 18 3.3 Maintenance & Supportof implemented Cloud

v. Upgrades - Any required version/Software /Hardwareupgrades, patch management etc. at the Cloud Site willbe supported by the Bidder for the entire contract periodat no extra cost to AICTE.

Excused from SLAs?Limit the number of version upgrades?

No Change

63 18 Clause (vii) under Section3.3: Maintenance andSupport of ImplementedCloud

On expiration / termination of the contract, Bidder tohandover complete data in the desired format to AICTEwhich can be easily accessible and retrievable.

Exit management process should be defined in the RFP and start at least 3 - 4months before the expiry of the contract.

Detailed Exit Management process will bediscussed before Contract signing


On expiration / termination of the contract, Bidder tohandover complete data in the desired format to AICTEwhich can be easily accessible and retrievable.


Repeated


On expiration / termination of the contract, Bidder tohandover complete data in the desired format to MHRDwhich can be easily accessible and retrievable.


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Has AICTE tested the RPO and RTO for the application and what are the currentvalues achieved for the RTO and RPO.

No, it is not tested



Has AICTE tested the RPO and RTO for the application on the current cloudsolution and what are the current values achieved for the RTO and RPO. Describeany known limitations of the current DR plan.

Repeated

68 57 7.6 (1) Provisioning and De-provisioning of Virtual Machines How & who will intimate the request? What report will be use for calculation? AICTE will set up the mechanism

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69 150 11, About Syamam /MooCApplication

Logical architecture of the application If customization is needed, then is that application production ready ?. Is anywork expected to be done my MSP ?

This information is needed for the sizing of the efforts needed toinstall and manage the apps.

Please refer to corrigendum for roles andresponsibilities of MSP and PaaS services

70 Page118-122

9.8.1.1& 9.8.1.2 For Development, Testing and UAT environment andProduction envirement

If Production and UAT enviornment configuration shared is Azure PaaSdependent than it should be removed and make platform independent

To make RFP cloud general and not cloud agnostic, we recommend toprovide the configuration as per the requirement and not as per thespecification taken from Azure Development enviornment. This willenable AICTE to have a requirement based configuration instead ofAzure availability based configuration of infrastructure.

Please refer corrigendum for informationon PaaS related services

71 28 4.3 Incase of separation of business or merger/acquisition,bidder may utilize the credentials and track of itspredecessor company to fulfil the Pre-Qualificationcriteria

If separation has happened in last 2 years, then only this clause should beapplicable

No Change

72 31 5.3.2 2) Number of ISP’s present in the Data Centre - TheBidder is required to confirm the number of ISP’spresent in theproposed Data Centres. The Bidder is required to self-certifyon their company letter head by Authorized Signatoryregarding number of ISP’s present in the proposed DataCentres. Bidder with maximum number of ISP’s will beawarded 4 marks and others shall be awarded marks onrelative (pro-rata) basis

In India 80% internet traffic is carried by top 4 ISPs. It is practically impossible totie up with all ISPs in India. Also, there is no redible resource to ascertain no. ofISPs in India. If AICTE has existing tie up with any ISP, we can extend servicesfrom same ISP. Request you to replace this criteria by site visit.

Clause deleted.


73 Additional Clause Is bidder mandated to use only government of India empaneled Cloud serviceProvider? We recommend to include MEITY 11 empaneled cloud service provider.

Since, MEITY has empaneled 11 cloud service providers for allgovernment, education, Public Sector Bank, cloud hostingrequirements , we recommend this to be pre-qualification criteria.

It is an open tender and not restricted tothe 11 empaneled CSP's by MeitY


Since, MEITY has empaneled 11 cloud service providers for allgovernment, education, Public Sector Bank, cloud hostingrequirements , we recommend this to be pre-qualification criteria.

Repeated


Since, MEITY has empaneled 11 cloud service providers for allgovernment, education, Public Sector Bank, cloud-hostingrequirements; we recommend this to be pre-qualification criteria.

Repeated

76 150 11, About Syamam /MooCApplication

Logical architecture of the application Is there any customization of the application (custom code) ? Or is the applicationstandard Microsoft Products ?

This information is needed for the sizing of the efforts needed toinstall and manage the apps.

The application code will be with theapplication vendor. Entire application isbuilt on Microsoft products.

Please refer to corrigendum forinformation on PaaS services

77 14 Clause (ii) under Section 3.1:Design, provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud

The Bidder will be responsible for design andprovisioning of required IT infrastructure asIaaS for hosting AICTE’s MOOC application. TheBidder will examine the MOOC application landscapethat needs to be hosted on cloud infrastructure. Thisactivity will enable the Bidder to gauge the Applicationworkloads criticality & complexity before provisioningmanaged hosting services in a multi-tenant IaaS modeland the Network Connectivity required. Bidder willstudy the existing application for mobility to cloud.

The Bidder shall be responsible for provisioningrequired compute infrastructure (server/virtualmachines), storage and services for hosting MOOCapplications. The indicative computerequirements for the IT infrastructure is placedat Annexure II Section 9.8. The Bidder will becommercially evaluated based on the indicative sizinggiven for 25 Lac users with 2% concurrency.

It should be clarified that the configuration provided in the RFP is only anindicative and the bidder may provide a closest (lower or higher) VMconfiguration.

The indicative scenario provides the actual VM configurations to beprovided. Since the VM configuration provided by different CSPs aredifferent, fixing the VM configuration in the RFP may lead to a vendorspecific requirement.

No change

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The Bidder will be responsible for design andprovisioning of required IT infrastructure asIaaS for hosting AICTE’s MOOC application. TheBidder will examine the MOOC application landscapethat needs to be hosted on cloud infrastructure. Thisactivity will enable the Bidder to gauge the Applicationworkloads criticality & complexity before provisioningmanaged hosting services in a multi-tenant IaaS modeland the Network Connectivity required. Bidder willstudy the existing application for mobility to cloud.

The Bidder shall be responsible for provisioningrequired compute infrastructure (server/virtualmachines), storage and services for hosting MOOCapplications. The indicative computerequirements for the IT infrastructure is placedat Annexure II Section 9.8. The Bidder will becommercially evaluated based on the indicative sizinggiven for 25 Lac users with 2% concurrency.

It should be clarified that the configuration provided in the RFP is only anindicative and the bidder may provide a closest (lower or higher) VMconfiguration.

The indicative scenario provides the actual VM configurations to beprovided. Since the VM configuration provided by different CSPs aredifferent, fixing the VM configuration in the RFP may lead to a vendorspecific requirement.

Repeated

79 114 9.6 Bidder should be able to provide High IOPS Storage(greaterthan 50,000 IOPS per VM).

Kindly confirm reason for high IOPs requirement This is a requirement for catering to thepeaks when the size of each IO request(Read/Write Operation) could be large(E.g. Simultaneous Access/download oftranscripts, Broadcast of a course video)

80 113 9.6 The Bidder will support and allow users to encrypt theirdata atrest using customer’s own key

Kindly elaborate the level of encryption required A minimum of 128 bit encryption isrequired. The responsibility ofmanagement of the Encryption Keysshould lie with the customer.

81 113 9.6 The Bidder should provide inbuilt logging and auditingcapabilities

Kindly elaborate the level of logging and type of auditing required. Please refer RFP

82 14 3.1 The Bidder shall be required tointegrate the Cloud Services with the existing CDN.

Kindly share the detail of integrated Akamai CDN Repeated

83 113 9.6 Integration with Akamai CDN Kindly share the detail of integrated Akamai CDN Repeated84 113 9.6 The Bidder should provide mechanisms to allow

provisioning/de provisioning of Virtual Machines ondemandand should not charge for them when de provisioned.

Manual process for provisioning/de provisioning of Virtual Machines will beaccepted. Please confirm

No change

85 113 9.6 The Bidder should support auto scalability to increase ordecrease the compute resources as per demand in orderofminutes based on CPU/RAM utilization and charge onlyforresources being used on a per minute, hourly or dailybasis.

Manual scalability and pay as per allocation to this affect will be accepted. Pleaseconfirm

No Change

86 15 3.1 The infrastructure provisioned by the Bidder must bescalable and shall allow AICTE toadd/reduce cloud resources on demand basis.

Manual Scaling to add/reduce cloud resources by Bidder this affect will beaccepted. Please confirm

No Change

87 12 2.2 Auto Scaling Manual Scaling to this affect will be accepted. Please confirm No Change88 13 2.3 Dynamic Scalability Manual Scaling to this affect will be accepted. Please confirm No Change89 19 Clause (v) under 3.4:

Provisioning Cloud servicesfor additional quantities atproposed rate

MHRD reserves the right to scale down and scale up theIT infrastructure. The payment would be made only onthe actual usage of the IT infrastructure as per the ratesprovided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

MHRD reserves the right to scale down and scale up the cloud resources. Thepayment would be made only on the actual usage of the cloud services as per therates provided by the Bidder in their Commercials.

Clause changed.



xvii. The Bidder should prepare a detailedimplementation plan with mapping of infrastructure atDC Site and DR site including the following parameters:- Server Provisioning- Storage Requirements- Network interfaces requirements- Network throughput requirements- Adequate power backup requirements- Failover mechanism for replication links

Microsoft to provide details?????

Some of the information such as Network Interface requirements are not relevantin case of public cloud service providers. Other information such as networkthroughput requirements would need inputs from the ApplicationDevelopers/Application Vendor

The requirement pertaining to NetworkInterface and Network Throughput wouldneed to be discussed jointly with theApplication vendor and lot would dependon the load on the application. Theserequirements are dynamic which wouldchange during the currency of the project.

91 57 7.6 Service Level Agreements, 2

Overall Cloud Solution Availability => 99.95% Overall Solution Availability => 99.9% Infrastructure availability and solution availability are two differentthings. While CSP will be responsible to provide the SLA for the infracomponent individually, AICTE should monitor the overall SWAYAMsolution availability also and it should be in the range of 99% to 99.9%( keeping in account the overallsetup and SLAs of various component). The solution HA should bekeeping in mind the HA/DR setup that is done and in case ofcatastrophic failure DR can be triggered.

No Change

92 Additional Clause Patch Management for OS Sharepoint & Databases Please refer to point v of section 3.3 of RFP

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93 113 9.6 The Cloud services should be available on pay as perusagemodel

Pay as per allocation to this affect will be accepted. Please confirm No Change. Cloud model to be based onpay per usage only

94 113 9.6 Any server/storage networking/security requirement tosupportthe DR solution at the DR Site should be provisioned bytheBidder and billed to AICTE on a "Per Usage Model"Only.Bidder is requested to mention any other component,LicenseService cost.

Pay as per allocation to this affect will be accepted. Please confirm No change

95 53 Section 7.4 Work CompletionTimelines & Payment Terms

Will start from the date of operational acceptanceprovided by AICTE QP for a period of 3 years

Payment should be based on milestone basis. Payment realization period is too long. No Change

96 57 7.6 Penalty Penalties are very high % of QP. This high %age will increase the price of solutionconsidering CSP only provides services credits. Request to reduce the maxiumpercentage to 5 %.

No change

97 48 6.17, 6.18 Failure of the Bidder to agree with the Terms &Conditions of the Bid Document/Contract shallconstitute sufficient grounds for the annulment of theaward of contract and seizure of EMD amount.

Bidder is required to refer to the Draft ContractAgreement, at Section 7 in this RFP Document, for allthe terms and conditions (including project timelines) tobe adhered by the successful MSP during ProjectImplementation and Post implementation period.

Please allow Bidder to propose its position on certain terms and conditions whichcould be discussed and agreed upon at the evaluation stage. If the deviations arenot agreed upon, you may reject the Bid without forfeiting the EMD

No Change

98 48 6.17, 6.18 Failure of the Bidder to agree with the Terms &Conditions of the Bid Document/Contract shallconstitute sufficient grounds for the annulment of theaward of contract and seizure of EMD amount.

Bidder is required to refer to the Draft ContractAgreement, at Section 7 in this RFP Document, for allthe terms and conditions (including project timelines) tobe adhered by the successful MSP during ProjectImplementation and Post implementation period.

Please allow Bidder to propose its position on certain terms and conditions whichcould be discussed and agreed upon at the evaluation stage. If the deviations arenot agreed upon, you may reject the Bid without forfeiting the EMD

Repeated

99 131 Annexure III We declare that all the services shall be performedstrictly in accordance with the Bid Documents and thereare no deviations except for those mentioned in Pre-Qualification Envelope, irrespective of whatever hasbeen stated to the contrary anywhere else in our bid.

Please allow deviations which could be listed in this Annexure and mutuallyagreed upon at the evaluation stage

No Change

100 131 Annexure III We declare that all the services shall be performedstrictly in accordance with the Bid Documents and thereare no deviations except for those mentioned in Pre-Qualification Envelope, irrespective of whatever hasbeen stated to the contrary anywhere else in our bid.

Please allow deviations which could be listed in this Annexure and mutuallyagreed upon at the evaluation stage

Repeated

101 38 8 INR 1,00,00,000/- in form of DD from anationalized/scheduled bank in favour of MemberSecretary, All India Council for Technical Education,Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, payableat New Delhi

Please allow EMD in the form of Bank Guarantee In all Governement tenders EMD is acceptable in the form of DD andBank Guarantee both .

Accepted.Please refer to corrigendum

102 52 7.3(i) The term of this CA shall be a period of three years fromthe date of issuance of Letter of Acceptance/ PurchaseOrder.

Please amend this clause as:

The term of this CA shall be a period of three years from the date of executionof the CA.

Three year operational and maintenancephase starts from the date of operationalacceptance provided by AICTE.

103 52 7.3(i) The term of this CA shall be a period of three years fromthe date of issuance of Letter of Acceptance/ PurchaseOrder.

Please amend this clause as:

The term of this CA shall be a period of three years from the date of executionof the CA.

Repeated

104 50 7.1 (ix) Services means the content and services delivered and tobe delivered to the customers or the offices of AICTE bythe Service Provider, and includes but not limited to theservices specified in the Bid Document or as may bespecified and incorporated in the subsequentAgreement/s under Contract Agreement.

Please amend this definition as:

Services means the content and services delivered and to be delivered to thecustomers or the offices of AICTE by the Service Provider, and includes but notlimited to the services as specified in the Bid Document or as may be specifiedand incorporated in the subsequent Agreement/s under Contract Agreement.

No Change

105 50 7.1 (ix) Services means the content and services delivered and tobe delivered to the customers or the offices of AICTE bythe Service Provider, and includes but not limited to theservices specified in the Bid Document or as may bespecified and incorporated in the subsequentAgreement/s under Contract Agreement.

Please amend this definition as:

Services means the content and services delivered and to be delivered to thecustomers or the offices of AICTE by the Service Provider, and includes but notlimited to the services as specified in the Bid Document or as may be specifiedand incorporated in the subsequent Agreement/s under Contract Agreement.

Repeated

106 54 7.5 LOA Please calculate the time period from the execution of the contract Implementation period starts from thedate of issuance of LOA and 3 year ofO&M starts from the date of issuance ofoperational acceptance

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107 54 7.5 LOA Please calculate the time period from the execution of the contract Repeated108 17 3.3 Maintenance & Support of implemented Cloud Please clarify any other security guidelines than ISO 27001, ISO 20000:1 to be

included in scope.No Change

109 Additional Clause Please clarify do bidder need to provide service management tools like Incident,Problem, configuration, Service management tools etc.Does MHRD expect a "single pane of glass" for IT service amangement?

Bidder has to provide Self Serviceprovisioning portal which shall include allrelevant services

110 89 8.5 OEM Autorization to bid Please clarify does bidder need to provide OEM letter considering the equipment'swill be deployed in cloud and not details will be available from CSP.


111 55 7.6 Service Level Agreement - Point e - “Resolution Time”shall mean the time taken (after the incident has beenreported at the helpdesk), in resolving (diagnosing,troubleshooting and fixing) or escalating (to the secondlevel) getting the confirmatory details about the samefrom the bidder and conveying the same to the enduser), the services related troubles during the first levelescalation.

Please clarify if bidder suppose to setup their own helpdesk or MHRD havingtheir own helpdesk? If MHRD has their own helpdesk, how the call will be routedto bidder technical team? If bidder suppose to setup the helpdesk, please providedetails like location, logistics, service windows, how many users will call helpdesk& scope for the same?


112 75 7.23(b) There should be no sub-contracting. The Bidder shallnot sub-contract work to any other party.

Please clarify if Bidder can utilize its partners resources As per the RFP, MSP and CSP are partnersin the bid and they can use each othersresources.

113 75 7.23(b) There should be no sub-contracting. The Bidder shallnot sub-contract work to any other party.

Please clarify if Bidder can utilize its partners resources Repeated

114 The Bidder shall be responsible for ensuring security ofMHRD applications and infrastructure from any threatsand vulnerabilities. The Bidder shall address ongoingneeds of security management including, but not limitedto, monitoring of various devices / tools such as firewall,intrusion prevention/ detection, content filtering andblocking, virus protection, even logging & correlationand vulnerability protection through implementation ofproper patches and rules.

Please clarify if bidder need to provide anti-virus licenese or any other threat,vulnerablity management software products.

This must be part of the Cloud Solutionoffered by the Bidder

115 15 3 (xiii) The solution needs to provide the ability for MHRD ITAdministrators to automatically provision the servicesvia a Web Portal

Please clarify if MHRD IT administrators are being refereed as internal IT team ofMHRD or bidder need to provide IT administrators to manage the environment.

To know the roles and responsibility of bidder. It is referred to Internal IT team

116 17 3.3 The Bidder shall be responsible for providing 24*7*365days support for MHRD Cloud infrastructure for 03years .

Please clarify if MHRD looking to envisiage onsite or remote delivery model forsupport.

Bidder has to size and provide support.Cost for 3 year period needs to be providedby bidder. Minimum onsite support isrequired.


ix. The tool shall be capable of providing the exactutilization of servers and shall be able to generate perday, per month and per quarter utilization report

Please clarify if the report generated through Cloud Solution Provider's billingsystem will be sufficient for meeting the utilization and billing relatedrequirements.

If not, how does AICTE propose to handle disputes (if any)? CSP can use its billing system/tool for thispurpose. Access of this tool will also bewith AICTE.


ix. The tool shall be capable of providing the exactutilization of servers and shall be able to generate perday, per month and per quarter utilization report

Please clarify if the report generated through Cloud Solution Provider's billingsystem will be sufficient for meeting the utilization and billing relatedrequirements.

If not, how does AICTE propose to handle disputes (if any)? Repeated


xvi. The Cloud infrastructure and AICTE data must bemaintained ONLY at the location of the identified Cloudhosting site. Data can only be moved to other site in caseof any emergency with prior approval of AICTE.

Please clarify if the term "identified Cloud hosting site" includes both the DC andDR sites or not.

Depending on the amount of data needed and the RPO and RTOrequirements it might be necessary to maintain a Hot/Warm DR Sitein which scenario data will exist in two different sites

Yes, Cloud hosting site includes DC & DR.The bidder should disclose the DC & DRlocations which will be leveraged forSWAYAM.


xvi. The Cloud infrastructure and AICTE data must bemaintained ONLY at the location of the identified Cloudhosting site. Data can only be moved to other site in caseof any emergency with prior approval of AICTE.

Please clarify if the term "identified Cloud hosting site" includes both the DC andDR sites or not.

Depending on the amount of data needed and the RPO and RTOrequirements it might be necessary to maintain a Hot/Warm DR Sitein which scenario data will exist in two different sites

Repeated


The Bidder will be responsible for design andprovisioning of required IT infrastructure as IaaS forhosting MHRD’s MOOC application. The Bidder willexamine the MOOC application landscape that needs tobe hosted on cloud infrastructure. This activity willenable the Bidder to gauge the Application workloadscriticality & complexity before provisioning managedhosting services in a multi-tenant IaaS model and theNetwork Connectivity required. Bidder will study theexisting application for mobility to cloud.

The Bidder shall be responsible for provisioningrequired compute infrastructure (server/virtualmachines), storage and services for hosting MOOCapplications. The indicative compute requirements forthe IT infrastructure is placed at Annexure II Section9.8. The Bidder will be commercially evaluated based onthe indicative sizing given for 25 Lac users with 2%concurrency.

Please clarify is the configuration provided in the RFP is fixed or bidder is free tochoose different size VM configuration as per the workload requirement andusage pattern to meet the desired SLAs.

The indicative scenario provides the actual VM configurations to beprovided.

Please stick to the VM specificationsprovided in the RFP

122 116 9.6 Technical requirementspecifications, 42

Bidder should have Separate VLAN provision withdedicated virtual firewall between the VLANs andfor each and every client.

Please clarify on the requirement Separate VLANs are required for logicalsegregation of data traffic of the customershosted on Cloud. For security purpose,each VLANs should have a dedicatedvirtual firewall.

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Please clarify on the requirement Repeated





Bidder should have Separate VLAN provision withdedicated virtual firewall between the VLANs and foreach and every client.


126 52 7.3(ii) In the event of implementation period getting extendedbeyond the stipulated time, for reasons not attributableto the Bidder, AICTE reserves the right to extend theterm of the Agreement by corresponding period to allowvalidity of contract from the date of operationalacceptance.

Please clarify that any such delay not attributtable to Bidder if has anycommercial impact will be paid by AICTE

Repeated

127 52 7.3(ii) In the event of implementation period getting extendedbeyond the stipulated time, for reasons not attributableto the Bidder, AICTE reserves the right to extend theterm of the Agreement by corresponding period to allowvalidity of contract from the date of operationalacceptance.

Please clarify that any such delay not attributtable to Bidder if has anycommercial impact will be paid by AICTE

Bidder must factor in all such possibilitiesin the Commercial bid

128 61 7.9 Security and Safety Please clarify that CSP's standard security features will be flowed down by theMSP so fas as the Cloud Infra is concerned.

No change

129 61 7.9 Security and Safety Please clarify that CSP's standard security features will be flowed down by theMSP so fas as the Cloud Infra is concerned.

Repeated

130 61 7.9 Security and Safety Please clarify that in addition to the IT Act, Bidder shall comply with AICTE'ssecurity and safety policy to be provided in writing. Any changes to such policy orlaw and compliance having commercial impact will be addressed through CRprocess

No Change

131 61 7.9 Security and Safety Please clarify that in addition to the IT Act, Bidder shall comply with AICTE'ssecurity and safety policy to be provided in writing. Any changes to such policy orlaw and compliance having commercial impact will be addressed through CRprocess

Repeated

132 67 7.16 Limitation of Liability Please clarify that neither party will be liable to the other for indirect,consequential, incidental damages, and loss of profits, revenue, savings.

In no event shall either party be liable forany consequential, incidental, indirect,special or punitive damage, loss orexpenses (including but not limited tobusiness interruption, lost business, lostprofits, or lost savings) nor for any thirdparty claims even if it has been advised oftheir possible existence.

133 67 7.16 Limitation of Liability Please clarify that neither party will be liable to the other for indirect,consequential, incidental damages, and loss of profits, revenue, savings.

Repeated

134 14 Clause (iv) under Section 3.1:Design, provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud

The application software, the necessary licenses fordeploying MOOC applications ecosystem comprising ofthe above work streams will be procured by AICTE. Anyadditional licenses pertaining to Databases(SQL), SharePoint and Operating systems willbe installed by the Bidder.

Please clarify that the additional licenses will be procured by AICTE. Licenses will be procured by AICTE.Please refer corrigendum.

135 14 Clause (vi) under Section 3.1:Design, provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud

It is mentioned that AICTE MOOC application has beenintegrated with Akamai CDN (Content DeliveryNetwork) for better end user experience. The Biddershall be required to integrate the Cloud Services with theexisting CDN.

Please clarify that the licenses for Akamai CDN has already been procured byAICTE. Also please clarify if MSP/CSP will be responsible for the SLA related tothe CDN provider. Alternatively if the CSP also offers the CDN services then willMSP be allowed to use the same for better integration and availablity of theoverall solution.

Because CDN will act a front end delivery point of the MOOCplatform, it is very important that the CDN services remain highlyavailable at all time. For better integration and overall control, it issuggested that MSP should be allowed to leverage the CDN services ofthe CSP.

Repeated

136 14 Clause (vi) under Section 3.1:Design, provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud

It is mentioned that AICTE MOOC application has beenintegrated with Akamai CDN (Content DeliveryNetwork) for better end user experience. The Biddershall be required to integrate the Cloud Services with theexisting CDN.

Please clarify that the licenses for Akamai CDN has already been procured byAICTE. Also please clarify if MSP/CSP will be responsible for the SLA related tothe CDN provider. Alternatively if the CSP also offers the CDN services then willMSP be allowed to use the same for better integration and availablity of theoverall solution.


Repeated

137 77 7.23(h) AICTE or its nominated agencies shall have the right torequire the removal or replacement of any Bidderpersonnel performing work under this Agreement.

Please clarify that the request for removal of resources will be mutually agreedupon after due review of the conduct leading to such request.

As per the RFP

138 77 7.23(h) AICTE or its nominated agencies shall have the right torequire the removal or replacement of any Bidderpersonnel performing work under this Agreement.

Please clarify that the request for removal of resources will be mutually agreedupon after due review of the conduct leading to such request.

Repeated

139 72 7.20 (v) The terms of payment as stated in the Terms of PaymentSchedule include the costs of the Bidder complying withits obligations under this Schedule.

Please clarify that the termination assistance will be provided on mutually agreedprice

Termination assistance will be per the exitmanagement schedule provided in the RFP

140 72 7.20 (v) The terms of payment as stated in the Terms of PaymentSchedule include the costs of the Bidder complying withits obligations under this Schedule.

Please clarify that the termination assistance will be provided on mutually agreedprice

Repeated

141 15 3 (xiv) Key requirements for simplified Login for SWAYAM Please clarify the bidder scope for Simplified Login.For various language mentioned under enterprise search - please clarify bidderscope.

To understand the effort for integration and ongoing support. Please refer to corrigendum forinformation on PaaS related services

142 113 9.6 (vi) Technical requirement specifications - The Biddershould support third party virtual appliances

Please clarify the requirement and purpose of virtual appliances. Virtual Appliance refers to any VM imageor a software appliance which AICTEmight want to deploy. Cloud shouldsupport the requirement.

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143 60 7.8 Use & Acquisition of Assets during the term Please clarify the transfer of ownership in assets in light of the cloudinfrastructure which will be provided as a services with no transfer of ownership

It is mentioned that AICTE owns theapplication and software licenses whichwill be deployed on the Cloudinfrastructure. Therefore, the ownershipof application and system software willremain with AICTE and Cloudinfrastructure provisioned by bidder willbe used as a service

144 60 7.8 Use & Acquisition of Assets during the term Please clarify the transfer of ownership in assets in light of the cloudinfrastructure which will be provided as a services with no transfer of ownership

Repeated

145 15 xiv Active Directory Management like User, Group, storageaccounts

Please clarify who wil be responsible for Active Directory management likeuser/group/storage account management for MHRD internal applications users.

Also clarify if users/Students/Citizens are going to use same Active Directory ortheir credential will use different store.

Please refer to corrigendum forinformation on PaaS related services

146 124 9.8.2 Ownership of development, test and productionenvironment.

Please clarify who will have admnistrative control on development, Test andproduction environment.


147 121 9.8.1.2 Web Tier for Production Environment Please clarify why the DC & DR requirement for web tier VM count is different.All other tier having same requirement.

DR proposed is a warm DR

148 55 7.6.4. The SLA are proposed to be performance based. Forpurposes of SLA, the definitions and terms as specifiedalong with the following terms shall have the meaningsset forth below:a. “Uptime” shall mean the time period for which the ITInfrastructure Solution along with specified services /components with specified technical and servicestandards are available for users in all in-scopeApplications across the AICTE application landscape.Uptime, in percentage, of any component (Non IT andIT) can be calculated as : Uptime = {1- [(SystemDowntime) / (Total Time – Planned MaintenanceTime)]} * 100b. “Downtime” shall mean the time period for which theIT Infrastructure Solution and/or specified services /components with specified technical and servicestandards are not available to users. This includesServers, Routers, Firewall, Switches, all servers and anyother IT and non-IT infrastructure, theirsubcomponents etc. at all

Please confirm that Application software should be out of SLA of MSP & CSP As MSP can only deploy the application software, any SLA related toapplication should be out of scope for MSP/CSP.

Repeated

149 56 7.6 Service Level Agreements 5. However, it is the responsibility/ onus of the selectedBidder to prove that the outage isattributable to AICTE. The selected Bidder shall obtainthe proof authenticated by theAICTE’s official that the outage is attributable to theAICTE.

Please confirm that outages attributable to the application is excluded from theSLA as well

Yes, outage due to application failurewould be excluded from bidder's SLA

150 Additional Clause Please confirm that the licenses for Akamai CDN has already been procured byMHRD. Also please clarify if MSP/CSP will be responsible for the SLA related tothe CDN provider. Alternatively if the CSP also offers the CDN services then willMSP be allowed to use the same for better integration and availablity of theoverall solution.


Repeated


iv. The Bidder shall conduct vulnerability andpenetration test (from a third party testing agency whichmay be CERT-IN empaneled) on the Cloud facility every6 months and reports should be shared with AICTE. TheBidder needs to update the system in response to anyadverse findings in the report, without any additionalcost to AICTE.

Please confirm that the scope of these tests is limited to the Cloud Facility anddoes not include the application and or infrastructure hosted on the CloudFacility.

Need to understand the requirement to identify responsibility ofcompliance betweem MSP and CSP.

The scope of these tests is limited to theCloud Facility including IT Infrastructureand excluding applications.


iv. The Bidder shall conduct vulnerability andpenetration test (from a third party testing agency whichmay be CERT-IN empaneled) on the Cloud facility every6 months and reports should be shared with AICTE. TheBidder needs to update the system in response to anyadverse findings in the report, without any additionalcost to AICTE.

Please confirm that the scope of these tests is limited to the Cloud Facility anddoes not include the application and or infrastructure hosted on the CloudFacility.

Need to understand the requirement to identify responsibility ofcompliance betweem MSP and CSP.

Repeated

153 12 2.2 It is mentioned that AICTE has already procuredlicenses based on sizing of 25 Lac users. The details ofthese licenses are placed at Annexure II Section 9.7. Theinstallation of these software licenses will be theresponsibility of the Bidder. During the currency of theengagement, incase any additional software licenses arerequired, the same has to be procured by the Bidder atrates already agreed upon by AICTE with the softwarelicense provider. The rates for the software licenseswould be shared with the Bidder after on-boarding. Theresponsibility of procurement and installation of theselicenses will remain with the Bidder.

Please explain on this point . Please ensure Microsoft should not have advantageover other bidders

Licenses will be procured by AICTE.Please refer corrigendum.

154 54 7.4(5) No payment made by AICTE herein shall be deemed toconstitute acceptance by AICTE of the system or anyservice

Please have this clause deleted as there is no advance payment and payment willbe made only upon delivery and acceptance of services

Clause deleted.


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155 54 7.4(5) No payment made by AICTE herein shall be deemed toconstitute acceptance by AICTE of the system or anyservice

Please have this clause deleted as there is no advance payment and payment willbe made only upon delivery and acceptance of services

Repeated

156 72 7.21 Termination Please have this clause mutual and allow MSP right to terminate/suspend servicesin the event of breach of obligations by AICTE

No change

157 72 7.21 Termination Please have this clause mutual and allow MSP right to terminate/suspend servicesin the event of breach of obligations by AICTE

Repeated

158 70 7.20 (iii) Employees Please have this deleted as not applicable Clause deleted.


159 70 7.20 (iii) Employees Please have this deleted as not applicable Repeated160 65 7.13(2) Bidder will warrant that the solution provided under the

contract is new, of the most recent higher version/models and incorporate all recent improvements indesign and materials unless provided otherwise in thecontract.

The Bidder shall ensure defect free operation of theentire solution and shall replace any such components,equipment, software and hardware which are founddefective and during the entire contract period theBidder shall apply all the latestupgrades/patches/releases for the software afterappropriate testing. No costs shall be paid separately forthe warranty other that what are the costs quoted by theBidder and as specified in the contract.

Please have this warranty deleted. We warrant to meet or exceed mutually agreedSLAs

No Change

161 65 7.13(2) Bidder will warrant that the solution provided under thecontract is new, of the most recent higher version/models and incorporate all recent improvements indesign and materials unless provided otherwise in thecontract.

The Bidder shall ensure defect free operation of theentire solution and shall replace any such components,equipment, software and hardware which are founddefective and during the entire contract period theBidder shall apply all the latestupgrades/patches/releases for the software afterappropriate testing. No costs shall be paid separately forthe warranty other that what are the costs quoted by theBidder and as specified in the contract.

Please have this warranty deleted. We warrant to meet or exceed mutually agreedSLAs

Repeated


The Bidder should deploy VM such that every virtualcore should be mapped to physical core. No hyperthreading or turbo boost allowed

Please modify or remove this clause as"The Bidder should deploy VM such that physical CPU should be mapped tophysical core/virtual CPU. hyper threading or turbo boost allowed."

In the cloud environment, providing physical core is not the norm.These features are use for processor to work more efficiently, savingon power consumption and heat dissipation. Hyperthreading lets theprocessor run multiple threads simultaneously, making better use ofits Execution resources.

Clause deleted.


163 113 Section 9.6: Technicalrequirement specifications

7. The Bidder should support auto scalability to increaseor decrease the compute resources as per demand inorder of minutes based on CPU/RAM utilization andcharge only for resources being used on a per minute,hourly or daily basis.

Please modify this clause as"7. The Bidder should support auto scalability to increase or decrease the computeresources as per demand in order of minutes based on CPU/RAM utilization andcharge only for resources being used on hourly or daily basis."

Per minute billing is offered by Microsoft and Google. Google do nothave their datacenters in India hence this clause will only qualifyMicrosoft which will prohibit competition. Therefore, you arerequested to change the clause as suggested for wider participation.

Clause changed.



7. The Bidder should support auto scalability to increaseor decrease the compute resources as per demand inorder of minutes based on CPU/RAM utilization andcharge only for resources being used on a per minute,hourly or daily basis.

Please modify this clause as"7. The Bidder should support auto scalability to increase or decrease the computeresources as per demand in order of minutes based on CPU/RAM utilization andcharge only for resources being used on hourly or daily basis."

Per minute billing is offered by Microsoft and Google. Google do nothave their datacenters in India hence this clause will only qualifyMicrosoft which will prohibit competition. Therefore, you arerequested to change the clause as suggested for wider participation.

Repeated


38. The Bidder should deploy VM such that every virtualcore should be mapped to physical core. No hyperthreading or turbo boost allowed.

Please modify this clause as"The Bidder should deploy VM such that physical CPU should be mapped tophysical core/virtual CPU. hyper threading or turbo boost allowed."

Turbo boost and hyper-threading are features to use processor moreefficiently, saving on power consumption and heat dissipation.Hyperthreading lets the processor run multiple threadssimultaneously, making better use of its Execution resources. Onecore poses as two cores and starts fetching instructions from twoaddresses alternatively.

Turbo boost lets you push the most needed part of the processorbeyond its rated speed without crossing the thermal and powerlimitations of the system. Which means when other parts of the CPUare idle (like other cores, GPU etc) a lot of power and heat is saved.This can be rerouted to essential parts (like a core running an intensesingle threaded program) to run it at higher voltage and henceclockspeeds, ideally boosting its performance. You can also save thesoftware licensing cost by utilising these features as most of thevendores license thei rsoftware based on core. EnablingHyperthreading and Turbo boost will enable use of less processorcores thus reducing license cost.

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38. The Bidder should deploy VM such that every virtualcore should be mapped to physical core. No hyperthreading or turbo boost allowed.

Please modify this clause as"The Bidder should deploy VM such that physical CPU should be mapped tophysical core/virtual CPU. hyper threading or turbo boost allowed."

Turbo boost and hyper-threading are features to use processor moreefficiently, saving on power consumption and heat dissipation.Hyperthreading lets the processor run multiple threadssimultaneously, making better use of its Execution resources. Onecore poses as two cores and starts fetching instructions from twoaddresses alternatively.

Turbo boost lets you push the most needed part of the processorbeyond its rated speed without crossing the thermal and powerlimitations of the system. Which means when other parts of the CPUare idle (like other cores, GPU etc) a lot of power and heat is saved.This can be rerouted to essential parts (like a core running an intensesingle threaded program) to run it at higher voltage and henceclockspeeds, ideally boosting its performance. You can also save thesoftware licensing cost by utilising these features as most of thevendores license thei rsoftware based on core. EnablingHyperthreading and Turbo boost will enable use of less processorcores thus reducing license cost.

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32. Should use virtualization platform in public cloudwhich can be deployed on-premises and the VMs can bemoved from Public cloud to on-premises/private cloudseamlessly without reformatting.

Please modify this clause as " Should use a virtualization platform in public cloudwhich allows to migrate virtual machines in on-premises environemnt runningwith any of these virtualisation platform viz. vmware, Hyper-v and Xen.

Keeping the virtualisation format open will give you the flexibiity tomigrate to any virtualisation platform should you wish to migrate toon-premise data center from public cloud. There are many tools andcloud services available to migrate and convert the virtual machines inteh required format.

No Change


32. Should use virtualization platform in public cloudwhich can be deployed on-premises and the VMs can bemoved from Public cloud to on-premises/private cloudseamlessly without reformatting.

Please modify this clause as " Should use a virtualization platform in public cloudwhich allows to migrate virtual machines in on-premises environemnt runningwith any of these virtualisation platform viz. vmware, Hyper-v and Xen.

Keeping the virtualisation format open will give you the flexibiity tomigrate to any virtualisation platform should you wish to migrate toon-premise data center from public cloud. There are many tools andcloud services available to migrate and convert the virtual machines inteh required format.

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viii. The Bidder shall provide backup solution. Please provide additional details for the required backup solution. What is thefrequency (e.g. daily/weekly/monthly) and type of backup (e.g.full/incremental/differential etc) and the level (e.g. System/File/Image etc) that isdesired? What are the recommendations from the Application Vendor forconfiguring backup of different components in their solution?

Backup solution needs to be provided bybidder as a service. Backup policies will bedefined and communicated to the bidderlater.The bidder needs to provide unit rate perTB and rate for 50 TB of storage. Thebilling would be on actuals as perconsumption.


viii. The Bidder shall provide backup solution. Please provide additional details for the required backup solution. What is thefrequency (e.g. daily/weekly/monthly) and type of backup (e.g.full/incremental/differential etc) and the level (e.g. System/File/Image etc) that isdesired? What are the recommendations from the Application Vendor forconfiguring backup of different components in their solution?

Repeated

171 23 3.9 Responsibility Matrix 12. Migration of application from existing cloud setup tonew cloud

Please provide details on the existing cloud solution being used by AICTE to hostthe applications

Details w.r.t. existing cloud solution hasbeen provided in the RFP. For any otherdetails please refer to corrigendum

172 14 3 (vi) It is mentioned that MHRD MOOC application has beenintegrated with Akamai CDN (Content DeliveryNetwork) for better end user experience. The Biddershall be required to integrate the Cloud Services with theexisting CDN.

Please provide the architecture & details how the application is integrated withAkamai.

To understand the effort require for integration. Repeated

173 14 3 (viii) The Bidder shall provide backup solution Please provide the details like retention, restoration, onsite/offsite storing ofbackup and frequency related to backup.

To size the infrastructure and resource requirement for backupsolution.

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174 23 3.9 Responsibility Matrix (point 12) Please provide the details of existing cloud setup. Also provide the detailmigration scope & responsibility matrix.

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Number of ISPs present in the Data Center Please remove the clause The level of redundancy is addressed by the CSP through complianceto the TIA / Uptime standards and assurance on the overallavailability of the cloud services. Since alignment to Tier III standardsis already being asked for, this requirement becomes redundantevaluation criterion.

Clause deleted.



Expansion Capability Please remove the clause Providing any details by the CSP on this is more of a futuristicstatement or a promise that cannot be verified. Some CSPs may havestarted operations recently and still have enough headroom / capacitywithin the current setup and thereby not requiring any near termexpansion.

If the underlying objective is to ensure enough headroom to mee ttheAICTE requirement, the same is being addressed through therequirement of a minimum of 100 racks for cloud services and theprovisioning / de-provisioning SLA.

Clause deleted.


177 60 Section 7.8: Use &Acquisition of Assets duringthe term

All Clauses Please Remove the clauses The current clauses reflect the model of procurement andcommissioning of assets as against using the cloud services

No Change

178 118 Section 9.8: Indicative Sizingfor VM’s, Storage andServices

Caching as a ServiceActive Directory for External Users as a ServiceMedia services as a ServiceSearch as a service

Please Remove the clauses We request department to confirm if the concerned MOOC applicationis completely Cloud Platform agnostic or any of the applicationcomponents have dependencies on Microsoft Azure PaaS services.Since the application is already built using certain software thatAICTE has already procured and is based on the IaaS model, thesePaaS services are redundant. AICTE is already requesting the requiredcompute to deploy these softwares and hence there is no need forthese line items.

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Please Remove the clauses Since the application is already built using certain software thatAICTE has already procured, procuring these services is redundant.AICTE is already requesting the required compute to deploy thesesoftwares and hence there is no need for these line items.

Repeated



Please Remove the clauses Since the application is already built using certain software thatMHRD has already procured, procuring these services is redundant.MHRD is already requesting the required compute to deploy thesesoftwares and hence there is no need for these line items.

Repeated

181 89 Section 8.5: OEMauthorization to bid

Section 8.5: OEM authorization to bid Please Remove the letter Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

The bidder is free to use the CSP's self-service portal to provisionservices for AICTE will not require any authorization from the CSP.

Repeated

182 111 Section 9.5: Format forAuthorization Letters fromOEMs

Section 9.5: Format for Authorization Letters fromOEMs

Please Remove the letter Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

The bidder is free to use the CSP's self-service portal to provisionservices for AICTE will not require any authorization from the CSP.

Repeated

183 89 Section 8.5: OEMauthorization to bid

Section 8.5: OEM authorization to bid Please Remove the letter Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

The bidder is free to use the CSP's self-service portal to provisionservices for MHRD will not require any authorization from the CSP.

Repeated

184 111 Section 9.5: Format forAuthorization Letters fromOEMs

Section 9.5: Format for Authorization Letters fromOEMs

Please Remove the letter Cloud is a self-service provisioning of compute, storage and otherresources and there is typically no signed contract, work orders.

The bidder is free to use the CSP's self-service portal to provisionservices for MHRD will not require any authorization from the CSP.

Repeated


Sizing in DR Please Remove the requirement DR should be architected with a provision to scale up to the 100% ofthe resources (within the specified RPO / RTO) only in the event of aNon-Availability of DC / Disaster / DC-DR Drills. Where DC isoperational, there should not be any idle resources in the DR .

Cloud Model enables AICTE to reduce the overall cost of the projectby eliminating the need to provision 100% compute resources in DRwhen the DC is fully functional.

No Change


Sizing in DR Please Remove the requirement Repeated


Sizing in DR Please Remove the requirement and the architecture of DR should be left to thebidder to enable fully functional application even in the case of a Disaster, takinginto consideration the end user experience.

DR should be architected with a provision to scale up to the 100% ofthe resources (within the specified RPO / RTO) only in the event of aNon-Availability of DC / Disaster / DC-DR Drills. Where DC isoperational, there should not be any idle resources in the DR .

Cloud Model enables MHRD to reduce the overall cost of the projectby eliminating the need to provision 100% compute resources in DRwhen the DC is fully functional.

Repeated


31. Offer LDAP authentication services on cloud whichcan scale up to millions of users.

Please remove this clause. In different sections of the RFP you have asked for authenticationwith Active Directory. In the BOM section also there is a mention ofsetting up Active Directory for authentication and required number ofservers have been included. Please elaborate the usage scenarios forLDAP as a service.

It is being used to authenticate socialaccounts using Open authentication


43. The Bidder should provide a multi-tenant, Identitymanagement (User Authentication & Authorization) andDirectory service as a cloud service (as a native platformfeature) backed by SLA. The Identity service shouldallow single sign-on (SSO).

Please remove this clause. In different sections of the RFP you have asked for authenticationwith Active Directory. In the BOM section also there is a mention ofsetting up Active Directory and required number of servers have beenincluded. Please elaborate the usage scenarios for LDAP as a service.

Please refer corrigendum on informationrelated to PaaS services

190 113 Section 9.6: Technicalrequirement specifications 31. Offer LDAP authentication services on cloud which

can scale up to millions of users.

Please remove this clause. In different sections of the RFP you have asked for authenticationwith Active Directory. In the BOM section also there is a mention ofsetting up Active Directory for authentication and required number ofservers have been included. Please elaborate the usage scenarios forLDAP as a service.

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193 78 7.23(h) Management (Regional Head / VP level officer) ofBidder needs to be involved in the project monitoringand should attend the review meeting at least once in amonth.

Please replace this with Bidder's identified representative who will attend suchmeeting

Senior Level representation should bethere.

Please refer to the corrigendum194 78 7.23(h) Management (Regional Head / VP level officer) of

Bidder needs to be involved in the project monitoringand should attend the review meeting at least once in amonth.

Please replace this with Bidder's identified representative who will attend suchmeeting

Repeated


Indicative Sizing for VM’s, Storage and Services Provide the underlying sizing calculations and assumptions The indicative scenario provides the actual VM configurations to beprovided. Since the VM configuration provided by different CSPs aredifferent, fixing the VM configuration in the RFP may lead to a vendorspecific requirement.

The way cloud can be architected can different from one bidder to theother and also will be based on the capabilities of the Cloud ServiceProvider. AICTE should provide complete details of the MOOCplatform along with the underlying sizing calculations andassumptions that are used to arrive the different sizings. This willenable the bidder to architect the cloud services and provide the bestfit solution to AICTE.

No Change.These are configurations as perApplications requirements.


Indicative Sizing for VM’s, Storage and Services Provide the underlying sizing calculations and assumptions The indicative scenario provides the actual VM configurations to beprovided. Since the VM configuration provided by different CSPs aredifferent, fixing the VM configuration in the RFP may lead to a vendorspecific requirement.

The way cloud can be architected can different from one bidder to theother and also will be based on the capabilities of the Cloud ServiceProvider. AICTE should provide complete details of the MOOCplatform along with the underlying sizing calculations andassumptions that are used to arrive the different sizings. This willenable the bidder to architect the cloud services and provide the bestfit solution to AICTE.

Repeated

197 Registered students should be provided storage space on MOOC cloud for storingdocuments which they have downloaded or wish to upload.

This is useful for places where there is limited internet access so thatstudents can download, store and study offline.

No storage space required for students oncloud

198 18 Clause (vi) under Section3.3: Maintenance andSupport of ImplementedCloud

Bidder is required to provision additional VM’s when theutilization exceeds 80%.

Replace the clause with:

Cloud should provide functionality for rule-based auto-scaling. (e.g., utilizationexceeds a certain percentage for more than <<xx>> minutes or more than<<yy>> consecutive instances within a period of 30 minutes. The rules may beconfigured during the implementation.

In some instances, during batch processing, utilization may go above80% for a few minutes and return to normal. Provisioning ofadditional resources should be based on the rules during theimplementation based on the requirement rather than presrcibing atthe RFP Stage.

Auto-scaling should be rule based and the rules should be flexibileand configured / changed as per the requirements during theoperations.

Yes. Rules would be defined duringexecution stage



Replace the clause with:


Repeated


The bidder must share per unit pricing for each of thecomponents listed in Annexure III Section 10.4. Therates quoted are to be specified in “Per-Item-Per Month”basis. Any tools/software used during the project andsupport must be clearly discussed and approved withAICTE and the cost of the same must be solely incurredby the bidder.

Request "Per-Item-Per Hour" cost Leveraging cloud provides the flexibility to AICTE to take benefit ofthe following elastic features and optimize the overall costs:

a. Provision only the minimum required resources (increasing as perthe projections).b. Provision resources during the day time / business hours andreduce the resources during non-business business hoursc. Provision the resources for dev and qa environments duringbusiness hours and shut them down completely during the non-business hours.d. Auto Scaling where the additional resources are provisioned on thefly for a few hours to meet the peak demand and then getdeprovisioned after the demand gets back to normal

The pricing for IaaS is typically done on an per hour basis and thesame unit of measurement should be sought in the commercialformat.

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The bidder must share per unit pricing for each of thecomponents listed in Annexure III Section 10.4. Therates quoted are to be specified in “Per-Item-Per Month”basis. Any tools/software used during the project andsupport must be clearly discussed and approved withAICTE and the cost of the same must be solely incurredby the bidder.

Request "Per-Item-Per Hour" cost Leveraging cloud provides the flexibility to AICTE to take benefit ofthe following elastic features and optimize the overall costs:



Repeated

202 26 4.3 Pre-qualification Criteriafor Cloud Service Provider(CSP) , 2

Document required - a) Copy of Client certificate, workorder, completion certificate or extract from the contractmentioning the scope of work

Request a change - a) Copy of Client certificate, work order, completioncertificate, extract from the contract mentioning the scope of work or Purchaseorder given to the channel partner of the Cloud Service Provider.

Since this is a government bid, we recommend relevant experiencehandling government projects.

No Change


Document required -a) Copy of Client certificate,work order, completioncertificate or extract from thecontract mentioning the scope ofwork

Request a change -a) Copy of Client certificate,work order, completioncertificate, extract from thecontract mentioning the scope ofwork or Purchase order given to the channel partner of the Cloud ServiceProvider.


No change


Document required -a) Copy of Client certificate,work order, completioncertificate or extract from thecontract mentioning the scope ofwork

Request a change -a) Copy of Client certificate,work order, completioncertificate, extract from thecontract mentioning the scope ofwork or Purchase order given to the channel partner of the Cloud ServiceProvider.


Repeated

205 94 4 Format of Integrity Pact 4.4 To recover all sums already paid with interestthereon at 5% higher than the prevailing Base rate ofState Bank of India.

Request deletion No Change

206 13610.2 “Best Price” Offer LetterForma

I/ We further agree and undertake that in the event, if itis revealed subsequently after the allotment of work/contract to me/ us, that any information given by me/ usin this tender is false or incorrect, I/ We shallcompensate AICTE for any such losses or inconveniencecaused to the corporation in any manner and will notraise any claim for such compensation on any groundwhatsoever, I/ We agree and undertake that I/ We shallnot claim in such case any amount, by way of damagesor compensation for cancellation of the contract given tome/ us or any work assigned to me/ us or is withdrawnby the Corporation.

Request deletion Deleted.


207 94 4 Format of Integrity Pact 4.4 To recover all sums already paid with interestthereon at 5% higher than the prevailing Base rate ofState Bank of India.

Request deletion Repeated


I/ We further agree and undertake that in the event, if itis revealed subsequently after the allotment of work/contract to me/ us, that any information given by me/ usin this tender is false or incorrect, I/ We shallcompensate AICTE for any such losses or inconveniencecaused to the corporation in any manner and will notraise any claim for such compensation on any groundwhatsoever, I/ We agree and undertake that I/ We shallnot claim in such case any amount, by way of damagesor compensation for cancellation of the contract given tome/ us or any work assigned to me/ us or is withdrawnby the Corporation.

Request deletion Repeated


“I/ We do hereby further undertake that, we haveoffered the best prices for the subject supply/ work asper the present market rates. Further, we have filled inthe accompanying tender with full knowledge of theabove liabilities and therefore we will not raise anyobjection or dispute in any manner relating to anyaction, including forfeiture of deposit and blacklisting,for giving any information which is found to be incorrectand against the instruction and direction given in thisbehalf in this tender.

Request deletion as bidder would be providing the competitive rates as it is a L1Bid.

Repeated

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“I/ We do hereby further undertake that, we haveoffered the best prices for the subject supply/ work asper the present market rates. Further, we have filled inthe accompanying tender with full knowledge of theabove liabilities and therefore we will not raise anyobjection or dispute in any manner relating to anyaction, including forfeiture of deposit and blacklisting,for giving any information which is found to be incorrectand against the instruction and direction given in thisbehalf in this tender.

Request deletion as bidder would be providing the competitive rates as it is a L1Bid.

Repeated

211 Additional Clause Request for excel copy of commercial template to be provided. Excel sheet will be provided212 Additional Clause Request for excel copy of commercial template to be provided. Repeated213 115 9.6 Technical requirement

specifications, 38The Bidder should deploy VM such that every virtualcore should be mapped to physical core. No hyperthreading or turbo boost allowed

Request for removal Since Physical to virtual core mapping is invisible to end user thispoint can either be validated nor committed by public cloud provider,hence request you to remove.

Repeated




Repeated




Repeated

216 28 4.3 Pre-qualification Criteriafor Cloud Service Provider(CSP), 6

The CSP must be operating in multiple Data Centers inIndia. The DC and the DR should be in different seismiczones

Request for the changing the point for seismic zone to physical separation of DRwith minimum 750 KMS away

By adding safe distance between two datacenters AICTE is assured forresiliency from natural disaster as well as pandemics. Also key Indiancities reliable network, power and datacenter infrastructure lie insimilar seismic zones

No Change.DC and the DR should be in differentseismic zones is sufficient.



Request for the changing the point for seismic zone to physical separation of DRwith minimum 750 KMS away.

By adding safe distance between two datacenters AICTE is assured forresiliency from natural disaster as well as pandemics. Also key Indiancities reliable network, power and datacenter infrastructure lie insimilar seismic zones.

Repeated



Request for the changing the point for seismic zone to physical separation of DRwith minimum 750 KMS away.

By adding safe distance between two datacenters AICTE is assured forresiliency from natural disaster as well as pandemics. Also key Indiancities reliable network, power and datacenter infrastructure lie insimilar seismic zones.

Repeated


Operation and Maintenance phase- QP for a period of 3years

Request payment to be made Quarterly in Advance. SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

No Change


Operation and Maintenance phase- QP for a period of 3years

Request payment to be made Quarterly in Advance. SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

Repeated


Migration of the application on the new Cloudenvironment- Nil Payment

Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful Migration SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.



Migration of the application on the new Cloudenvironment- Nil Payment

Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful Migration SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

Repeated


Operational Acceptance- Nil Payment Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful Operational Acceptance SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

No Change


Operational Acceptance- Nil Payment Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful Operational Acceptance SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

Repeated


Provisioning of a) Data Centre & DR b) IT Infrastructureinstallation in Racks of DC&DR c) Network Connectivity-Nil Payment

Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful provisioning of a) DataCentre & DR b) IT Infrastructure installation in Racks of DC&DR c) NetworkConnectivity.

SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.



Provisioning of a) Data Centre & DR b) IT Infrastructureinstallation in Racks of DC&DR c) Network Connectivity-Nil Payment

Request payment to be made to the bidder on successful provisioning of a) DataCentre & DR b) IT Infrastructure installation in Racks of DC&DR c) NetworkConnectivity.

SI requests monthly payments to better manage the Working Capitaland Cash flows associated with the project.

Repeated

227 17 3.3 Operational Acceptance Request to clarify for how many users/concurrency the operational acceptancewill be conducted.

This information is needed to size the cloud infrastrucrure duringacceptance phase.

Please refer to RFP regarding concurrencyand sizing

228 Additional Clause Request to include a feature where every student will be given 1 TB of storagespace on the cloud to upload and download documents using his or her SWAYAMcredentials.

This would allow students to store documents and files related to thecourse on their personal storage. Which can also be used to share andcollaborate.

Repeated

229 Additional Clause Request to include a feature where every student will be given storage space onthe cloud to upload and download documents using his or her SWAYAMcredentials.


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Repeated

232 17 3.3 Maintenance & Support of implemented Cloud Request to provide the detail scope of work and responsibility matrix for bidder,MHRD and application provider.

Please refer to Section 3.9.

Scope of application vendor would bemaintenance of existing application.

Please refer to corrigendum for roles andresponsibilities of MSP.

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233 49 7.1 (v) Effective Date means the date on which the PurchaseOrder or Letter of Acceptance is issued;

Requesting to amend the effective date as the date of execution of the contract No Change

Signing of contract usually takes time.Therefore, Effective date should be thedate on which the Purchase Order orLetter of Acceptance is issued;

234 49 7.1 (v) Effective Date means the date on which the PurchaseOrder or Letter of Acceptance is issued;

Requesting to amend the effective date as the date of execution of the contract Repeated

235 114 9.6 Bidder be compliant to the following security standards -ISO27001, SOC1 and SOC2

Requesting you to relax this point. Please confirm No change

236 115 9.6 Should use virtualization platform in public cloud whichcan bedeployed on-premises and the VMs can be moved fromPubliccloud to on-premises/private cloud seamlessly withoutreformatting.

Requesting you to relax this point. Please confirm No change

237 55 Section 7.6: Service LevelAgreements

Service Levels Service Levels should be consolidated to:

a. Cloud SLAs (Availability of Compute Instances and Storage)

b. MSP SLAs (Application Request-Response Time, Provisioning of VirtualMachines, Overall Cloud Solution, RPO, RTO)

The VMs are not provisioned by the CSP but an environment in termsof compute, networking, and storage is given to the MSP to provisionthe same. It is typically an MSP, Customer or designated agency whowould be installing and managing the VMs in the cloud. Hence theRPO, RTO, Provisioning of VMs, Overall Cloud Solution SLAs belongsto the MSP.

MSP would be responsible for managingoverall SLA's

238 55 Section 7.6: Service LevelAgreements

Service Levels Service Levels should be consolidated to:

a. Cloud SLAs (Availability of Compute Instances and Storage)

b. MSP SLAs (Application Request-Response Time, Provisioning of VirtualMachines, Overall Cloud Solution, RPO, RTO)

The VMs are not provisioned by the CSP but an environment in termsof compute, networking, and storage is given to the MSP to provisionthe same. It is typically an MSP, Customer or designated agency whowould be installing and managing the VMs in the cloud. Hence theRPO, RTO, Provisioning of VMs, Overall Cloud Solution SLAs belongsto the MSP.

Repeated



Suggest changing the point for seismic zone to physical separation of DR withminimum 750 KMS away.

It is possible that DC and DR in different seismic zones but close toeach other and in that case, the impact on one can propagate to theother too. By adding safe distance between two datacenters AICTE isassured for resiliency from natural disaster as well as pandemics.

Repeated


The Bidder will need to provide a monthly uptime SLA of99.95%

Suggest keeping overall solution availability in the range of 99% to 99.9% as perindustry standard

Infrastructure availability and solution availability are two differentthings. While CSP will be responsible to provide the SLA for the infracomponent individually, AICTE should monitor the overall SWAYAMsolution availability also and it should be in the range of 99% to 99.9%( keeping in account the overallsetup and SLAs of various component). The solution HA should bekeeping in mind the HA/DR setup that is done and in case ofcatastrophic failure DR can be triggered.

Repeated


Cloud Orchestration layer availability Suggest removing this - as Orchestration Layer is not controlled, configured ormanaged by the CSP. CSP has no role in it's uptime in case of IaaS.

Public cloud service providers does not manage the Orchestrationlayer as they give the SLA on service only, it is more relevant to MSP.

No Change


Virtual Operating System Availability Suggest removing this - as OS is not controlled, configured or managed by theCSP. CSP has no role in the OS uptime in case of IaaS.

Public cloud service providers does not provide the SLAs for virtualOS levels as they give the SLA on service, it is more relevant tophysical hosting

No Change



Suggest removing this as the mappings are transparent to the user and thistechnology can change as it is a part of the virtualization layer. Ultimately - thefinal performance is what is imp for the solution.

Since Physical to virtual core mapping is invisible to end user thispoint can either be validated nor committed by public cloud provider,hence request you to remove.

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244 31 5.3.2 3) Expansion Capability - Future Expansion Capability(interms of Number of Racks to be accommodated) in theproposed Data Centres. The Bidder is required to self-certify on their company letter head by AuthorizedSignatory regarding their expansion capability in termsof number of racks. Bidder with maximum numbers ofracks to be expanded shall be awarded 3 marks and theothers shall be awarded marks on relative (prorata)basis.

Suggest to replace this criteria by Data centre visit. As there is no way to ascertainany bidders expansion capability. Request you to replace this criteria by site visit.

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245 Additional Clause The APIs should be based on open interoperable standard such as REST The cloud solution expected to scale to 30 Million users , only APIintegration application with cloud infrastructure would guaranteetight integration and automatic scalability , hence recommending touse industry standard , open RESTful APIs to be available from CSP.

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248 Additional Clause The APIs should be based on open interoperable standard such as REST The cloud solution expected to scale to 30 Million users, only APIintegration application with cloud infrastructure would guaranteetight integration and automatic scalability, hence recommending touse industry standard, open RESTful APIs to be available from CSP.

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The quantities mentioned in Annexure II Section 9.8 areindicative in number. AICTE may procure thesecomponents on per item per month price basis The above charges must include Cloud DR provisioning (i.e. provisioning of equivalent resource onDR site of Cloud)

The architecture of DR should be left to the bidder to enable fully functionalapplication even in the case of a Disaster, taking into consideration the end userexperience. The architecture with respect to the DR being in a different siesmiczone or a different place from the DC should be left open to the bidder.

DR should be architected with a provision to scale up to the 100% ofthe resources (within the specified RPO / RTO) only in the event of aNon-Availability of DC / Disaster / DC-DR Drills. Where DC isoperational, there should not be any idle resources in the DR .

Cloud Model enables AICTE to reduce the overall cost of the projectby eliminating the need to provision 100% compute resources in DRwhen the DC is fully functional.

No Change

The DR should be a warm DR.


The quantities mentioned in Annexure II Section 9.8 areindicative in number. AICTE may procure thesecomponents on per item per month price basis The above charges must include Cloud DR provisioning (i.e. provisioning of equivalent resource onDR site of Cloud)

The architecture of DR should be left to the bidder to enable fully functionalapplication even in the case of a Disaster, taking into consideration the end userexperience. The architecture with respect to the DR being in a different siesmiczone or a different place from the DC should be left open to the bidder.

Repeated

251 Additional Clause The bidder should be in the leader’s quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant fortechnologies used in the datacenter including Infrastructure as a services, cloudstorage service, database and hypervisor, at a minimum.

Prestigious platform like SWAYAM , should be hosted on industryleading cloud platform, validated by third party analyst like Gartner.

No change


The CSP must have experience of provisioningInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on their Cloud for atleast 3 clients form Private/PSU/Central Govt/StateGovt. or any other Organization or agencies in India.

The CSP must have experience of provisioning Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)on their Cloud for at least 3 clients from Central Govt/State Govt. agencies inIndia.

Since this is a government project, relevant government projectexperience is mandatory

No Change


The CSP must have experience of provisioningInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on their Cloud forat least 3 clients form Private/PSU/CentralGovt/State Govt. or any other Organization oragencies in India.

The CSP must have experience of provisioningInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on their Cloud forat least 3 clients from CentralGovt/State Govt. agencies in India.


Repeated


The CSP must have experience of provisioningInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on their Cloud forat least 3 clients form Private/PSU/CentralGovt/State Govt. or any other Organization oragencies in India.

The CSP must have experience of provisioningInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on their Cloud forat least 3 clients from CentralGovt/State Govt. agencies in India.


Repeated

255 Additional Clause The CSP shall provide APIs to consume the services and complete documentationfor all the APIs it offers


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260 26 4.3 Pre-qualification Criteriafor Cloud Service Provider(CSP) , 3 a)

The Data Center Facility must be within India, should becurrently operational and have a minimum capacity of100 Racks owned or contracted.

The Data Center Facility must be within India, should be currently operationaland have a minimum capacity of 300 Racks owned or contracted.

SWAYAM is proposed to scale 30 Million students which wouldrequire huge storage, compute and network infrastructure, to ensureenough expansion, scalability & consistent performance, werecommend minimum capacity of 300 Racks to be mandate.

No Change


The Data Center Facility must be within India,should be currently operational and have aminimum capacity of 100 Racks owned orcontracted.



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264 53 Section 7.4 Work CompletionTimelines & Payment Terms

Will start from the date of operational acceptanceprovided by AICTE QP for a period of 3 years

The Invoice has to be raised at the beginning of a quarter or at the end of quarter The invoice has to be raised by the bidderonly after ending of quarter.

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265 12 2.1: Project Background The cost provided by the Bidder on per item per monthbasis will also be applicable for provisioning of theminimum requirement which would becommunicated to the Bidder after on-boardingand the Bidder would be required to do theprovisioning accordingly.

The minimum requirement during the first year along with the increase for everysubsequent year should be provided in the RFP to enable AICTE to take advantageof optimized total cost.




No change


The minimum requirement during the first year along with the increase for everysubsequent year should be provided in the RFP to enable AICTE to take advantageof optimized total cost.




Repeated


The minimum requirement during the first year along with the increase for everysubsequent year should be provided in the RFP to enable MHRD to takeadvantage of optimized total cost.


Where there is predictability in demand, providing the minimumrequirement will enable MHRD to take advantage of the lower unitcost of the resources.Keeping the demand completely uncertain will lead to higher overallunit costs and unnecessary higher payments from the government.

Repeated

268 25 4.2 The MSP should have managed or managing the ITinfrastructure for Data Centre /Cloud services to at least3 clients (Private/PSU/Central Govt/State Govt. or anyother Organisation or agencies) in India during lastthree Financial Years (2013-14, 2014-15 & 2015-16)

The MSP or its affiliate* should have managed or managing the IT infrastructurefor Data Centre /Cloud services to at least 3 clients (Private/PSU/CentralGovt/State Govt. or any other Organisation or agencies) in India during last threeFinancial Years (2013-14, 2014-15 & 2015-16).*Affiliate is defined as one who controls, is controlled by, or is under the commoncontrol with Bidder. As used in this definition, the expression “control” means,with respect to a person which is a company or corporation, the ownership,directly or indirectly, of more than 50% (fifty per cent) of the voting shares of suchperson, and with respect to a person which is not a company or corporation, thepower to direct the management and policies of such person by operation of law.

No change

269 25 4.2.3Pre-qualification Criteria forManaged Service Provider(MSP)

The MSP should have an annual turnover of INR 100Crores from IT Services and should be profitable overthe last three financial years (2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16).

The MSP should have an annual turnover of INR 60 Crores from IT Services andshould be profitable over the last three financial years (2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16).

Recently we were declared L1 Bidder and awarded contract forProviding Cloud Services for a Government Data Centre afterdefeating nearest competitor by 60% margin.Relaxing the criteria would enable you to get the maximumcompetition which would allow you to procure the best technology atan optimal price, hence saving a substantial amount to the exchequer.

No change

270 25 4.2 The MSP should have managed or managing the ITinfrastructure for Data Centre /Cloud services to at least3 clients (Private/PSU/Central Govt/State Govt. or anyother Organisation or agencies) in India during lastthree Financial Years (2013-14, 2014-15 & 2015-16)

The MSP should have managed or managing the IT infrastructure for Data Centre/Cloud services to at least 3 clients (Private/PSU/Central Govt/State Govt. or anyother Organisation or agencies) in India during last Six Financial Years (2013-14,2014-15 & 2015-16)

No Change

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271 12 2.1: Project Background The cost provided by the Bidder on per item permonth basis will also be applicable for provisioning ofthe minimum requirement which would becommunicated to the Bidder after on-boarding and theBidder would be required to do the provisioningaccordingly.

The pricing for IaaS is typically done on an per hour basis and the same unit ofmeasurement should be sought in the commercial format.

Leveraging cloud provides the flexibility to AICTE to take benefit ofthe following elastic features and optimize the overall costs:



Clause changed.


272 47 Section 6.14.3: Stage 3 –Commercial Evaluation

The Commercials will only be opened for Bidders whohave qualified the Technical evaluation stage.The bidder must share per unit pricing for each of thecomponents listed in Annexure III Section 10.4 and alsoa firm lump sum price of the entire proposal. The ratesquoted are to be specified in “Per-Item-Per Month”basis. A

It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done basis the indicative Bill of Quantitiesmentioned in the RFP. The Bidder has to provide “Per-Item-Per Month” cost based on the usage which shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform which scaling up andscaling down of the requirements.





Repeated

273 12 2.1: Project Background The cost provided by the Bidder on per item permonth basis will also be applicable for provisioning ofthe minimum requirement which would becommunicated to the Bidder after on-boarding and theBidder would be required to do the provisioningaccordingly.





Repeated

274 47 Section 6.14.3: Stage 3 –Commercial Evaluation

The Commercials will only be opened for Bidders whohave qualified the Technical evaluation stage.The bidder must share per unit pricing for each of thecomponents listed in Annexure III Section 10.4 and alsoa firm lump sum price of the entire proposal. The ratesquoted are to be specified in “Per-Item-Per Month”basis. A

It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done basis the indicative Bill of Quantitiesmentioned in the RFP. The Bidder has to provide “Per-Item-Per Month” cost based on the usage which shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform which scaling up andscaling down of the requirements.





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275 59 7.6 Service Level Agreements The total deduction per quarter shall not exceed 20% ofthe total QP value

The total deduction per quarter shall not exceed 5% of the total QP value As per industry standards. No Change

276 59 7.6 Service Level Agreements The total deduction per quarter shall not exceed 20% ofthe total QP value

The total deduction per quarter shall not exceed 5% of the total QP value As per industry standards. Repeated

277 4.3 Pre-qualification Criteria for Cloud Service Provider(CSP) -

There is no minimum turnover requirement indicated for CSP. Request you tokeep 'INR 100 Cr. Revenue from cloud service' as prequalification criteria.

This will help in getting strong financial bidders & will help in longrun project execution

No Change

278 61 7.10 Performance BankGuarantee

This Performance Bank Guarantee will be for an amountequivalent to 10% of contract value.

This Performance Bank Guarantee will be for an amount equivalent to 5% ofcontract value. PBG can be invoked only in case of material breach and afteraproviding a cure period of 30 days to the bidder.

Request PBG to be capped to 5% of TCV. No Change

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279 61 7.10 Performance BankGuarantee

This Performance Bank Guarantee will be for an amountequivalent to 10% of contract value.

This Performance Bank Guarantee will be for an amount equivalent to 5% ofcontract value. PBG can be invoked only in case of material breach and afteraproviding a cure period of 30 days to the bidder.

Request PBG to be capped to 5% of TCV. Repeated

280 17 3.2 Operational Acceptanceof Cloud

iii. The Bidder will have to facilitate the OperationalAcceptance Tests

Time limit/Effort limit? Retesting efforts??? Please refer to corrigendum for roles andresponsibilities of MSP

281 19 Clause (ii) under 3.4:Provisioning Cloud servicesfor additional quantities atproposed rate

The rates offered for cloud services must be valid forentire contract/project duration. No variation in thesequoted rates shall be allowed during this period.

To enable the bidder to provide a commercial quote that is valid for the entireproject duration, it is important for AICTE to providing the minimum requirementof resources over the years.

Any additional requirement of resources to meet the actual demand (that could behigher than minimum) will be met through auto-scaling to ensure theperformance SLAs of the application. The unit costs for the resources provisionedunder the minimum requirement as well as the additional auto-scaled resourcesmay also be discovered as part of the commercial bid.

Repeated



To enable the bidder to provide a commercial quote that is valid for the entireproject duration, it is important for AICTE to providing the minimum requirementof resources over the years.


Repeated



To enable the bidder to provide a commercial quote that is valid for the entireproject duration, it is important for MHRD to providing the minimumrequirement of resources over the years.


Repeated


Cloud Security Layer Availability To our understanding there is no such feature available from CSP, hence requestfor removal or request for further clarification on features and requirements

Public cloud service providers can incorporate security features andcomponents, having said that there is no such security layeravailability. CSP gives SLA on service, it is more relevant to MSPs.

No Change

285 72 7.21 Termination of contract Upon termination, AICTE will pay bidder for all the services rendered andaccepted till the date of termination.

As per industry standards. Upon termination, AICTE agrees to paythe Bidder for all charges on account ofservices provided by the Bidder andaccepted by AICTE till effective date oftermination.

Payment upon termination will be subjectto the services being accepted by AICTEafter applicable penalties

286 72 7.21 Termination of contract Upon termination, AICTE will pay bidder for all the services rendered andaccepted till the date of termination.

As per industry standards. Repeated



Version updates for the software (Sharepoint, SQL, Operating Systems etc) mayhave dependencies on the Application Vendor, please confirm that the applicationvendor will be responsible for maintaining compatibility with the underlyinginfrastructure.

Please refer to the corrigendum for rolesand responsibilities of MSP



Version updates for the software (Sharepoint, SQL, Operating Systems etc) mayhave dependencies on the Application Vendor, please confirm that the applicationvendor will be responsible for maintaining compatibility with the underlyinginfrastructure.

Repeated

289 15 3.1 Design, provisioning of ITinfrastructure and setup ofCloud , xiv

The clause mentions the support for 10 Indian language, These are the following languages which are part ofSWAYAM Project and enterprise search isrequired for all the below languages , These are thefollowing languages which are part of SWAYAM Projectand enterprise search isrequired for all the below languages:-· English· Hindi· Bangla· Gujarati· Kannada· Malayalam· Marathi· Punjabi· Tamil· Telugu

We recommend support for search in 10 languages as mentioned to be part of pre-qualification criteria for CSP

Since RFP clearly states that search has to be supported in 10languages, we recommend this should be part of pre-qualificationcriteria.

Please refer to corrigendum forinformation on PaaS related services

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The clause mentions the support for 10 Indian language, These are the following languages which are part ofSWAYAM Project and enterprise search is required forall the below languages , These are the followinglanguages which are part of SWAYAM Project andenterprise search is required for all the below languages:-· English · Hindi · Bangla · Gujarati · Kannada ·Malayalam · Marathi · Punjabi · Tamil · Telugu



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293 18 3.3 Maintenance & Support of implemented Cloud We request MHRD to define how the data data need to handover (e.g. in offlinemedia like tapes , Disks etc. )

Will be defined later by AICTE

294 17 3.2 Operational Acceptance We request MHRD to include operational acceptance test in consultation withapplication provider for bidder to estimate the scope for implementation andmigration. Also MHRD to exclude any delay in operational acceptance due toissue pertaining to applications.Bidder shall be responsible for deployment of the MOOC application on the Cloudinfrastructure. Necessary support for its migration would be provided by theapplication vendor of MHRD.


Application responsibility remains withthe application vendor only

295 Additional Clause SLA Targets We request MHRD to segregate the targets for production and Non-productionenvironment.




We request this clause to be replace the clause with:


In some instances, during batch processing, utilization may go above80% for a few minutes and return to normal. Provisioning ofadditional resources should be based on the rules during theimplementation based on the requirement rather than presrcibing atthe RFP Stage.

Auto-scaling should be rule based and the rules should be flexibileand configured / changed as per the requirements during theoperations.

Rules would be set during implementationphase

297 17 3.3 Maintenance & Supportof implemented Cloud, i

Compliance process to the defined internationalstandards and security guidelines such as ISO 27001,ISO 20000:1, for maintaining operations of cloud andensuring privacy of AICTE data.

We suggest to include ISO 27018 certification for the cloud service provider ISO 270018 is the key cloud specific privacy standard No change



We suggest to include ISO 27018 certification for the cloud service provider ISO 270018 is the key cloud specific privacy standard followed acrossthe industry and guarantees the best practices being implemented bythe CSP for Data center privacy, security and safety.

Repeated



We suggest to include ISO 27018 certification for the cloud service provider ISO 270018 is the key cloud specific privacy standard Repeated



We suggest to include ISO 27018 certification for the cloud service provider ISO 270018 is the key cloud specific privacy standard Repeated

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We understand that bidder will be responsible for provisioning a logicallydedicated cloud and support Network and security with dedicated virtual firewalland virtual load balancer integration for auto-scale functions.

Request to suitabily modified to reflect the procurement of cloudservices.

To be part of cloud services only

302 47 6.14.3. Stage 3 – CommercialEvaluation

It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done basis the indicative Bill of Quantitiesmentioned in the RFP. The Bidder has to provide “Per-Item-Per Month” cost based on the usage which shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform which scaling up andscaling down of the requirements

We would like to clarify that both the parties would agree to the Bill of Quantitiesin the RFP.This would be minimum commitment from AICTE.

No minimum commitment, there is achange in commercial format.

Please refer corrigendum.

303 47 6.14.3. Stage 3 – CommercialEvaluation

It is mentioned that the Commercial Bid evaluationwould be done basis the indicative Bill of Quantitiesmentioned in the RFP. The Bidder has to provide “Per-Item-Per Month” cost based on the usage which shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform which scaling up andscaling down of the requirements

We would like to clarify that both the parties would agree to the Bill of Quantitiesin the RFP.This would be minimum commitment from AICTE.

Repeated

304 137 10.3 Commercial Bid Format& Instructions

The cost based on the usage per item per month shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform when scaling up andscaling down of the requirements.

We would like to clarify that both the parties would agree to the volume andpricing given in the RFP.This would be minimum commitment from AICTE.

We request that the unit rate quoted by bidder shall be applicable up to 25%incremental volumes procured by AICTE. Thereafter the rates shall be mutuallyagreed by AICTE and bidder.

No Change

305 137 10.3 Commercial Bid Format& Instructions

The cost based on the usage per item per month shallremain uniform for the entire duration of the contractand shall also remain uniform when scaling up andscaling down of the requirements.

We would like to clarify that both the parties would agree to the volume andpricing given in the RFP.This would be minimum commitment from AICTE.

We request that the unit rate quoted by bidder shall be applicable up to 25%incremental volumes procured by AICTE. Thereafter the rates shall be mutuallyagreed by AICTE and bidder.

Repeated

306 12 2.1 (Project Background) Additional software licenses required by MHRD Will the procuremement of extra software licenses be re-imbursed by MHRD ? Oris the bidder expected to absorb the cost ?

Commercial considerations. Repeated

307 13 2.2 Self Service provisioning Portal Without Self Service provisioning Portal will be accepted. Please confirm No Change308 113 9.6 The Bidder should have the capability to provide various

otherservices like Database, Cache, Search, Analytics, MobileBackend, Queues, Tables, Backup, IdentityManagement, CDN,Client Application Analytics as a Service on pay as perusagemode backed by monthly SLAs of minimum 99.5%availability.

Yearly SLAs of minimum 99.5% availability instead of monthly will be accepted.Please confirm

No Change


i. Compliance process to the defined internationalstandards and security guidelines such as ISO 27001,ISO 20000:1, for maintaining operations of cloud andensuring privacy of data

Repeated