Software Reseller

1.0 BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The United Nations Procurement Division (UNPD), on behalf of OICT, intends to conduct a competitive solicitation to establish a global Long-Term Agreement (LTA) for software reseller services. The contemplated arrangement would replace an existing contract and support United Nations Secretariat entities, offices and missions worldwide. The objective is to obtain broad, reliable and commercially competitive access to software licences, subscriptions, maintenance and related lifecycle services through a supplier capable of operating directly or through publisher-authorized distribution channels.

Specific Requirements/Information 2.0 INDICATIVE SCOPE OF REQUIREMENTS

The anticipated requirement includes:

• A broad, multi-publisher catalogue covering desktop and productivity, design and publishing, engineering and CAD, geographic information and mapping, statistics and analytics, project management, collaboration, e-learning, infrastructure, security, database, middleware, developer and testing software, including niche and specialized titles.
• Commercial perpetual and term licences, software subscriptions, maintenance and support renewals, and software-as-a-service subscriptions where approved and within the final solicitation scope.
• Electronic delivery of licence keys, subscriptions and online entitlements to United Nations locations worldwide, including field missions and offices away from Headquarters.
• Centralized renewal tracking, entitlement and subscription inventory management, upgrade and end-of-support visibility, consolidated reporting, audit support, publisher escalation and licensing assistance.
• A secure self-service capability for catalogue search, quotation and order visibility, entitlement records, renewal tracking, reporting, exports and order history, subject to confirmation in the solicitation documents.
• A structured and responsive process for onboarding additional publishers and products throughout the contract period.
• Flexible commercial arrangements, including annual and multi-year subscriptions, per-user licensing, co-terming, true-ups and entity-level invoicing, where applicable.

3.0 GOVERNANCE, APPROVALS AND EXCLUSIONS Software available under separate United Nations-wide or enterprise agreements is expected to be excluded. Other expected exclusions are hardware, except where a subscription is inseparable from an appliance; custom software development; and cloud infrastructure consumption services.

4.0 EXAMPLE OF SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT The United Nations seeks expressions of interest from qualified suppliers capable of providing software licences, subscriptions, renewals, maintenance and support across multiple software publishers. For indicative purposes, the current environment includes software from Red Hat, LLC; Veeam Software Group GmbH; International Business Machines Corporation; Tenable, Inc.; Autodesk, Inc.; Maltego Technologies GmbH; Okta, Inc.; Open Text Corporation; Skopenow, Inc.; Elastic N.V.; AlgoSec Inc.; Fivecast Pty Ltd; Authentic8, Inc.; Atlassian Pty Ltd; PortSwigger Ltd; and Workleap Platform Inc., and their relevant software-publishing affiliates. “Relevant software-publishing affiliates” means entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with a listed company and publish or license software within that company’s product portfolio. Software from approximately 250 publishers has been procured under the current arrangement. The above list is illustrative and non-exhaustive, identifies companies rather than individual products, and does not restrict future requirements to the listed publishers or their current portfolios. Interested suppliers are invited to describe their publisher coverage and ability to supply products across the relevant portfolios, including any limitations relating to reseller authorization, product availability, geographic coverage or customer eligibility.

5.0 VENDOR PROFILE AND MINIMUM CAPABILITY EXPECTATIONS Vendors expressing interest should demonstrate their capacity to:

• Act as an authorized reseller, or source through publisher-authorized distribution channels, for a broad portfolio of publishers, including specialized and niche products.
• Demonstrate experience in establishing new partnerships with software publishers.
• At the solicitation stage, demonstrate authorization as a reseller of, or access through a publisher-authorized distributor for, a majority of the seventeen (17) publishers listed in Section 4.0. The final requirement will be set out in the solicitation documents.
• Quote, resell and electronically deliver software licenses and subscriptions to users in all countries and territories where United Nations Secretariat entities, offices and missions operate worldwide, subject to publisher licensing rules and export controls.
• Manage a large and diverse portfolio of spot purchases, subscriptions and renewals across multiple software titles and publishers.
• Provide transparent quotations, accurate entity-level invoicing, renewal notifications, audit support and responsive licensing assistance.
• Provide lifecycle management and comprehensive, consolidated reporting of software entitlements across multiple publishers, suitable for decentralized United Nations requirements under centralized governance, with reporting available through data exports and/or an online client portal.
• Provide English-language licensing support across time zones relevant to global United Nations operations.

6.0 ANTICIPATED CONTRACT AND SERVICE TERMS

• An LTA (systems contract) for a period of six (6) years, subject to satisfactory performance.
• Non-exclusive LTAs with no minimum purchase commitment. The United Nations would be bound only by purchase orders issued under the LTAs.
• Pricing based on committed minimum discounts from publishers’ published list prices, fixed for the duration of the LTA, including extensions.
• Core lifecycle management services—including the portal, renewal notifications, entitlement register and quarterly reporting—provided at no additional cost.
• Primarily electronic delivery through electronic software distribution, licence keys and online entitlements.
• English-language licensing support from Monday to Friday, beginning at 09:00 Central European local time and continuing without interruption until 18:00 New York local time, with daylight-saving changes considered.