Procurement of VPS Hosting Services for One Year by National Insurance Company Limited

National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) Islamabad invites bids for the procurement of VPS Hosting services for a period of one year under reference NICL/Procurement/2026/36. This procurement is for flexible cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) with billing based on actual resource consumption. The contract may be extended for up to two additional years subject to satisfactory performance and mutual agreement. Items being procured: - VPS Hosting with minimum single instance baseline: 8 vCPUs, 64 GB RAM, 2,000 GB SSD storage, Windows Server 2019 Standard or Oracle Linux - Maximum environment baseline: up to 72 vCPUs, 264 GB RAM, 8,000 GB SSD storage - Internet bandwidth: minimum 5 Mbps CIR, up to 50 Mbps - Data connectivity: 1 Mbps CIR from VPS Cloud to NICL Head Office, up to 20 Mbps - Dedicated virtual firewall with UTM bundle, up to 2 instances - Migration and deployment of 1 Oracle Linux Database 19c instance and 6 Windows Server instances - Training on cloud environment, virtualization, SQL and Oracle databases The cloud infrastructure must include two identical environments: a Primary Site and a Disaster Recovery Site operating in Active-Passive mode with real-time data replication. The virtualization platform must be Oracle E-Business Suite certified and support multi-tenancy with secure isolation and centralized management. Eligibility criteria include having offices in Karachi and Lahore/Islamabad, active taxpayer status, Tier-III compliant data centers in Pakistan, 10+ years of cloud service experience, 20+ active enterprise customers, ISO 27001 certification, and advanced security capabilities including Fortinet solutions and Web Application Firewall. Bids must be submitted electronically via EPADS v2.0 by 10:00 AM on October 5, 2026. Manual bids will not be accepted. Bid security is replaced by a Bid Securing Declaration. Technical and financial bids will be evaluated using Least Cost Based Selection (LCBS). Bidders should ensure compliance with all technical specifications and submit required documentation including certifications and proof of experience. The contract includes liquidated damages for service failures and data breaches. Payment terms will be finalized upon contract signing with payments made within 30 days subject to government tax deductions. A practical tip for bidders: Carefully review the detailed technical architecture and SLA requirements to ensure your cloud platform meets all criteria, especially the multi-tenancy, disaster recovery, and security specifications, to avoid disqualification during technical evaluation. This procurement offers a significant opportunity for qualified cloud service providers to partner with a major national insurer in Islamabad, providing critical hosting infrastructure with high availability and security standards.