The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has a tender out for: Web hosting, infrastructure and management – this tender falls under the category of Goods and services – Value exceeding R500 000, including VAT.
The period for which the calculation of value exceeding R500 000 is not clear though.
I presume that the tender ONLY refers to the physical and infrastructural requirements for hosting on the municipal web site/s and NOT to the actual running of the web site/s and keeping them current as in Web Design, SEO, etc.
Now if you want to use a dedicated offshore server from a hosting company that is considered to be the absolute best in the business you can expect to pay anywhere from R3 000.00 and up per month to have your problem solved.
If you want to host locally with a dedicated server and tons of bandwidth you can expect to pay from R5 000.00 per month and up.
Of course, if the web hosting requirements of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality are below 150 gigabytes of space and around 250 gigabytes of monthly bandwidth then I am sure that I could find them a reputable offshore shared or cloud server for around R1000.00 per month.
It would be interesting to see what requirements the Municipality has in place to justify a spend of well over R500 000.00.
Does anyone know?
Alan Straton
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I am currently on a contract for the municipality. That amount doesn’t really surprise me. They have off-site server hostage to which they need dedicated bandwidth to ensure secure access as well as some form of service SLA. This might not be the tender requirements,but I haven’t see the tender so I can’t speak for them. My assumption is just that that is most likely what they want. At only 5,000 per month it works out to be 60,000 so it is also possible that they might need to upgrade the hardware and it would potentially also include design and hardware? The NMBM has the tendency to be VERY vague and only once you actually start doing the work do they start giving you the actual parameters. Not that I say this as an intention to insult. My assumption is that this happens as they are understaffed and under resourced and struggle to give some items as much attention as they deserve as they are unable,then once the project is under way they give it their best effort as it comes up and is urgently required. There are many challenges at the metro that the public are unaware of and not even talking about any political (i.e. ANC,DA etc. challenge). I’m talking about all the red-tape, skills and resource challenges.
There are many excellent people working at the metro that deserve credit, but never get it. Just like there are many people that would probably be better suited to work somewhere else, but… it is what it is and like anything we have to all work together to focus on the positive, try and get rid of the negative and move forward.
I am currently on a contract for the municipality. That amount doesn’t really surprise me. They have off-site server hostage to which they need dedicated bandwidth to ensure secure access as well as some form of service SLA. This might not be the tender requirements,but I haven’t see the tender so I can’t speak for them. My assumption is just that that is most likely what they want. At only 5,000 per month it works out to be 60,000 so it is also possible that they might need to upgrade the hardware and it would potentially also include design and hardware? The NMBM has the tendency to be VERY vague and only once you actually start doing the work do they start giving you the actual parameters. Not that I say this as an intention to insult. My assumption is that this happens as they are understaffed and under resourced and struggle to give some items as much attention as they deserve as they are unable,then once the project is under way they give it their best effort as it comes up and is urgently required. There are many challenges at the metro that the public are unaware of and not even talking about any political (i.e. ANC,DA etc. challenge). I’m talking about all the red-tape, skills and resource challenges.
There are many excellent people working at the metro that deserve credit, but never get it. Just like there are many people that would probably be better suited to work somewhere else, but… it is what it is and like anything we have to all work together to focus on the positive, try and get rid of the negative and move forward.
Or, it could be a severe waste of money. After all, tendertrepreneurs are not known to work for peanuts – they’re not known to work at all, in fact.