Welcome to The Tide 🌊, Xoserve’s monthly newsletter, providing a summary of our progress, sharing updates and upcoming work as we navigate the waters of our UK Link modernisation project together.
To ensure you can access the latest information, we are maintaining our Project Trident homepage with all the latest materials, including our active Project Trident Q&A log.
Trident’s Top Three: Our headlines for the month
Market Engagement for Project Trident has taken place
Project Trident plans to build further assurance into our governance structure
Enterprise Architecture function for Project Trident matures
1. Market Engagement for Project Trident has taken place
Our Market Engagement exercise ran from 13 November to 10 December, with the questionnaire made available via the Delta e-sourcing portal (open to the whole of the market).
The primary objective was to get feedback from the market on a set of carefully crafted questions for our UK Link replacement as articulated in the SOC,  rather than to evaluate any individual vendor(s). A secondary benefit was to excite the market about involvement in a future UK Link replacement.
We have been successful on both accounts, with 17 of the 22 organisations who registered for the Trident Market Engagement event on the procurement portal providing a response. 
There were several common themes and recommendations on how to approach Project Trident, as well as some helpful references to how other organisations acting as central market operators have approached similar problems.
Vendors endorsed our 6 Economic case options (see table right) with no additional options put forward, and they universally discarded our options A and B (Do-Nothing and buy extended SAP support). 
Most vendors suggested delivery timeframes of 2.5-3.5 years after contract signature, which aligned to our existing estimates.
Contract Managers and nominated Project Trident Engagement representatives will be invited to a call to present a high-level summary of the outcomes from Market Engagement on Wednesday 5 February. Please note that we are unable to share commercially sensitive information related to individual responses or the names of vendors.
We will use the outputs from the Market Engagement as a significant input to our sourcing strategy. This will define the formal procurement approach we follow, and our lotting strategy which will be drafted in H1.
We will follow-up with some specific questions related to individual responses and will engage with several other central market operators referenced to understand their learnings.
Note:  a fair and level playing field needs to be maintained across vendors prior to and during the procurement phases – vendors responding to the market engagement felt this was critical to enable a fair and transparent procurement process.
Project Trident plans to build further
assurance into our governance structure
Our governance structure for Project Trident continues to mature with two planned additions.
We expect to appoint one or more independent representatives to the Steering Committee to directly represent the wider customer voice. We will be consulting the market through Q1 2025 to shape this role and a supporting customer forum with a view to appoint when we have identified the right candidate(s). While the ultimate oversight and decision-maker for Project Trident is the Xoserve Board, and the customer nominated directors, inclusion of the customer representatives in steering will aid transparency and allow input from you, our stakeholders.
We are looking at securing independent programme assurance in Q1 2025, to be determined and approved by the Xoserve Board. The organisation appointed will be expected to provide assurance for the project itself and also for the industry participants.
Please find attached our current governance structure available on the Project Trident homepage.
3. Enterprise Architecture function for Project Trident matures
Xoserve and Project Trident’s Enterprise Architecture function continues its establishment at pace with 67 key artefacts developed across architecture catalogues, matrices and diagrams in build for use in Project Trident.
Within January 2025, we began a pilot of our Architecture Review Board (ARB), which will have internal responsibility for the governance of changes, decisions and approvals relating to Xoserve's architecture. It will also align future changes to the Xoserve architectural strategy and principles, ensuring a consistent approach and control to architecture changes of both a business and technical nature, adding further early support to Project Trident.
To aid the efficiency of change in the architectural space and enable a self-serve repository of the architectural artefacts, several Enterprise Architecture tools are being reviewed against a set of requirements captured. Xoserve based demonstrations are due to be run early February where scoring of each tool will be undertaken in line with a mini-RFP with the objective of selecting a single tool/vendor for implementation. This tool will be another strong asset to support Project Trident in the months and years to come.
Stay in touch
If you have any early feedback on the newsletter, it's content or what you’d like to see next, please email us via communications@xoserve.com. Otherwise stay tuned for more updates and thank you for your continued support.
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