Objectives

The primary objective of this tender is to appoint a capable and experienced service provider to design, implement, operate, support, and maintain a secure, resilient, and modern Wide Area Network (WAN) solution for the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) over a period of five (5) years. The WAN solution must ensure secure, reliable, scalable, and highly available connectivity across all agency sites, support automated failover and redundancy, enable centralized management, optimize application performance, and support secure access to internal systems, hosting environments, internet services, and strategic partners.

Scope

The scope of the bid encompasses the following components:

• Design, supply, implementation, support, maintenance, monitoring, and management of an integrated WAN solution.
• Provision of Software Defined-Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) services.
• Hosting Centres (co-location services) as Primary Hosting Centre (PHC) and Secondary Hosting Centre (SHC).
• Network and Internet Access Security services.
• Connectivity links to SASSA partners.
• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk services.
• Solution architecture diagrams and detailed explanations.

Technical Requirements

The technical requirements include:

• Provision of 2 SD-WAN links and devices per office, configured in active-active mode with automatic failover, over diverse underlays (Fibre, Microwave, LTE), excluding VSAT and copper.
• Bandwidth provisioning as per Annexure A, with 1:1 contention ratio for internet connectivity.
• Operational risk mitigation strategies, including handling power failures and vandalism.
• Centralized management capabilities ensuring operational continuity despite site failures or regional disasters.
• Support for three classes of service (voice, video, data) with real-time QoE and QoS support, allowing flexible bandwidth utilization.
• Intelligent traffic steering supporting hybrid/multi-cloud architectures, prioritizing critical workloads, and enabling seamless connectivity to cloud providers.
• Provision for establishing new offices, relocating existing offices, upgrading or canceling links, with pricing and management of ADHOC requests.
• Alternative last-mile connectivity options and recommendations for emerging technologies.
• Demonstration of national service capability, proven track record, and partnership with OEMs.

Skills Requirements

The skills and qualifications required from the bidder include:

• Proven experience in providing SD-WAN services for enterprise organizations, with detailed track record including number of clients and project sizes.
• Partnership with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), supported by valid partnership letters.
• Certification and expertise in data center management (Tier 3 or higher), information security (ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 9001), and relevant network/security technologies (CISSP, CISM, CCNP, CCIE, SD-WAN, SASE, ZTNA, NGFW, IPS).
• Experience in managing co-location data centers, physical and facility security controls, and equipment relocation processes.
• Capability to provide comprehensive security solutions including next-generation firewalls, encryption, ZTNA, SASE, SWG, CASB, and SOC integration.
• Expertise in telephony and SIP trunk services, including number porting, external call tariffs, and capacity management.
• Qualified project management personnel (e.g., PMP, Prince2) and technical leads for solution design, implementation, and service transition.
• Onsite support staff with relevant certifications (CCNP, CCIE) and experience for service management and incident resolution.