7 x Cisco Switches

City of Bradford MDC needs to urgently purchase the equipment as this is required for a Proof of Concept (POC) at a number of Council sites. As part of a bandwidth upgrade from 10MB to 100MB, this POC will ensure that the automation process for the switches at our MAN sites works successfully. The POC is for 7 switches over 4 Council sites and is needed urgently to test the proposed solution.There is an urgency to get this kit and start the POC stage as this needs to be all done for the 68 sites within 12 months as the existing switches are End of Life. There is a requirement that the hardware is compatible with the Council's datacentre and for us to be automated. The hardware needs to be Cisco or else it will not work with the investment the Council has already made for the Core networking. The existing solution is based on Cisco technology and therefore this solution needs to be compatible for auto provisioning of the switches. These need to be purchased via a Cisco approved reseller and as Virgin Media are currently upgrading the Council network from 10mb to 100mb, then this will be done at the same time. This ensures an end to end functionality and rollout and if there are any issues / concerns then it will be Virgin Media's responsibility to resolve.