Oracle Database Licences, Maintenance and Support

The Road Accident Fund (RAF), a Schedule 3A public entity headquartered in Centurion, has issued a request for bids for the acquisition of new Oracle Database licences and the renewal of maintenance and support for its existing Oracle estate. The contract runs for a fixed period of 36 months. The scope covers 16 new Oracle Advanced Compression processor perpetual licences, plus renewal of support for a broad portfolio that includes Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (975 Named User Plus and 58 processor licences), Partitioning, Advanced Security, Database Vault, Diagnostics and Tuning Packs, and Active Data Guard. The RAF will provide Customer Support Identifiers for quoting purposes. Bidders must submit firm, VAT-inclusive pricing in ZAR for Years 1 to 3, with annual escalation built into Years 2 and 3. Prices must be all-inclusive, with no additional costs considered after award.

The successful bidder will provide second- to fourth-line technical support for Oracle products across Sandbox, Development, QA, Production and DR environments, including custom scripts and stored procedures. Other duties include monthly patch and upgrade reporting, security hardening aligned with CIS baselines, licence and cost optimisation, Oracle best-practice advice, and acting as the single point of contact for Oracle incidents and engagements with Oracle Corporation. Service levels are tiered by severity, with resolution targets of 2 hours for Severity 1 and 4 hours for Severity 2, and 24x7 support is required for incidents. Additional services include cloud readiness assessments and migrations (for example OCI, AWS RDS for Oracle, or hybrid architectures), up to five person-days per month of approved project work outside routine support, monthly service reporting, runbooks and SOPs, and quarterly architecture reviews. Data must not be stored or processed outside South Africa without RAF approval, and the RAF reserves audit rights.

Mandatory requirements include documentary proof of OEM accreditation in the form of a Manufacturer Authorisation Form (MAF), which the OEM indicates takes about 14 days to obtain. Bidders must also demonstrate Oracle licence lifecycle management and at least five years' experience across Oracle 19c and higher, high-availability clustering, capacity and licence management, and database security. Professional indemnity cover extending to privacy breach and cyber liability is required before award, along with a business continuity plan, a Central Supplier Database registration, and valid SARS tax compliance. Evaluation uses a 100-point technical stage (company experience of up to 50 points and two to three client reference letters of up to 50 points, with a 60-point minimum) followed by an 80/20 price and specific goals split. Specific goals cover South African citizen ownership, women ownership, and ownership by persons with disabilities, each at 51% or more. Bids are due by 11:00 on 20 November 2026 and must be hand-delivered or couriered to the RAF tender box in Centurion, as emailed or faxed bids will not be accepted. A non-compulsory briefing session takes place on 2 November 2026 via Microsoft Teams. Questions close on 7 November 2026. Contract values above R10 million trigger National Industrial Participation (NIP) reporting obligations for the successful bidder.