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The Royal Moroccan Football Federation has announced the launch of an international tender for the acquisition and installation of advanced IT equipment for its facilities, with an estimated total cost exceeding 37.8 million dirhams, including taxes.
As the delegated project owner, the National Agency for Public Equipment has set the estimated value of the first lot at over 13.3 million dirhams, approximately 4.6 million dirhams for the second lot, and more than 16.2 million dirhams for the third lot, while the cost of the fourth lot reached about 3.75 million dirhams, all amounts inclusive of taxes.
The tender involves four lots: the first concerns the acquisition and installation of system equipment, the second pertains to network equipment, the third is focused on information security equipment, while the fourth includes the acquisition and installation of a comprehensive solution for managing Wi-Fi internet access, applicable at the federation’s headquarters, the Mohammed VI Football Complex, and its hotels.
This project aligns with the Royal Moroccan Football Federation’s efforts to implement its strategic plan for digital transformation, which aims to establish a modern, secure, and high-performance data center within the Mohammed VI Football Complex in Maâmoura, with the goal of enhancing its technological infrastructure and improving the quality of IT services provided.
According to the technical specifications document, the project is part of the federation’s efforts to provide a digital infrastructure capable of meeting its future aspirations, ensuring service continuity, and protecting sensitive data amid rising challenges related to cybersecurity.
This initiative is based on a comprehensive renewal of the current network infrastructures, which have become outdated, as well as the unification and interconnection of the two currently separate local networks linked to the federation’s headquarters and the Mohammed VI Complex, all under a unified architecture that is high-performance and compliant with current technological standards.
A technical audit conducted as part of the project revealed that the existing infrastructure relies on heterogeneous equipment from various manufacturers, some of which no longer meet performance and security requirements, such as Cisco, HP, and Ubiquiti equipment, which are set to be replaced, while modern devices from Huawei will be retained and integrated into the new architecture.
The project includes the acquisition and installation of system and server equipment, storage solutions, high-performance networking equipment, along with backup systems and data protection measures.
The first lot involves deploying a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) platform made up of a cluster consisting of at least six nodes, with high processing and storage capabilities, ensuring continuity, constant availability, and scalability without service interruption, in addition to supporting encryption, replication, and unified management.
The project also outlines the provision of an S3-compatible object storage solution with a total capacity of up to 150 terabytes, with horizontal scalability and high data availability via instant replication between clusters.
Moreover, the specifications document includes the acquisition of four high-performance network switches, classified among market leaders according to Gartner’s criteria, capable of delivering high transmission speeds and low response times, while supporting routing, aggregation, and network protection protocols.
Additionally, the project includes the adoption of an advanced software solution for backup and recovery, allowing for the protection of virtual and physical servers as well as sensitive applications, ensuring instant recovery and mechanisms to counter ransomware attacks.
To secure long-term archiving, the project specifies the provision of a high-capacity backup robot, expandable to over one thousand terabytes, with advanced security, encryption, and monitoring levels, alongside a dedicated server for its management and operation.
The execution of this project will go through several integrated phases, including a status study, the design of the targeted architecture, installation and testing, migration of existing systems, as well as training and knowledge transfer for the technical teams of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation.
