Provision of Software-Defined Wide Area Network for the United Nations

The United Nations (Secretariat, UNGSC, DOS, OSD) with its redundant telecommunications hubs in Brindisi (Italy) and Valencia (Spain) plans to upgrade its Wide Area Network connectivity between the hubs and approximately 300 locations worldwide to the Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) technology. Accordingly, the United Nations is soliciting the Expression of Interest (EOI) from the qualified vendors to supply, with no conditions or limitations, the complete SD-WAN technology suite including hardware, software, licenses, reporting, engineering support, consultancy, and training/knowledge transfer.

United Nations uses satellite communications as the primary means of connecting the majority of locations to the hubs in Brindisi and Valencia. Accordingly, the respective SD-WAN solution is required to perform equally over the high latency transport type (600-700ms of RTT) as it does when using the Internet and/or MPLS. In addition, the proposed solution must allow the United Nations to select the most suitable SD-WAN service model between the fully owned/on-prem, fully managed/cloud-based, or hybrid model for all or some parts of the technology suite.

Please note that this is not an invitation for the submission of a bid and/or proposal. This is a Request for Expression of Interest (REOI) to identify the qualified vendors for participation in the solicitation.