By Mohamed Alaa El-Din
The Ministry of Communications launched a tender for technological infrastructure hosting services based on virtual servers, in a bid to make government services faster and cheaper.
The project aims to spread technological services to various government agencies and to activate the pay-for-use model for government services.
This comes as the ministry resumed putting projects up for investment after several years of discontinuation. The ministry aims to stimulate the IT market and increase domestic demand to implement its strategy to automate government services.
The deadline for applications for the tender is 15 November, and implementation will begin within a month from the date of issuing the order. The contract period was set for three years.
The tender included other components, such as 1,450 Basic Processing Units, 15,000 Extra Storage Units, 1,305 Windows Operating Licenses, and 145 Linux Operating Licenses.
The tender will also include 190 Microsoft SQL Server Licenses, 80 licenses to for SharePoint Server, and 30 Internet lines with speeds of 1 MB and 30 internet lines of 5 MB.
The Ministry of Communications developed a plan to launch three mega-projects with the participation of the private sector through the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) system. Those projects are automating commercial register offices and real estate registry offices at investments of nearly EGP 2bn.
The second project is manufacturing 40m smart metres. The project is estimated to cost EGP 10bn. The third project is to host services based on virtual servers, aiming to help speed up the implementation of the other two projects.
