Natural History Museum - Bulk Storage Solution

The Natural History Museum ("NHM") intends to initiate a procurement exercise in 2026 for a modern, cloud-aligned Bulk Data Storage and Lifecycle Management Solution to deliver scalable capacity that meets growing research demand and aligns with the Museum's digital transformation strategy. The solution is anticipated to be the primary bulk storage infrastructure supporting over 300 scientists across multiple research domains including CT scanning, bioinformatics, molecular biology, and imaging analysis. We envisage (based on the museums current cloud strategy) , a hybrid architecture with intelligent on-premise caching and cloud-native object storage and archive in AWS, delivered as a fully managed service with multi-tier data lifecycle management and robust access control.
The NHM currently intends to undertake a single procurement utilising an outcome-based functional requirements approach. The procurement will seek a comprehensive managed service encompassing both the storage platform infrastructure and ongoing operational support, with the supplier assuming responsibility for 24/7 monitoring, capacity planning, security patching, backup and disaster recovery, and service delivery under contractual Experience Level Agreements (XLAs). Any supplier would need to be certified to ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus.
This Preliminary Market Engagement Notice relates to the development of the solution as a unified managed service procurement. The NHM is seeking supplier engagement to validate requirements, explore innovative approaches to outcome-based service delivery, and inform commercial models including consumption-based pricing, XLAs and meaningful KPIs, and leased equipment options.
This notice is solely for the purpose of engaging the market to gather information. It does not constitute a call for competition or form part of a competitive process. Participation in this engagement will not confer any advantage or disadvantage in any future procurement, nor...