SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) Request for Information (RFI)
- Notice Date
- 4/7/2006
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 511210
— Software Publishers
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD, 20894
- ZIP Code
- 20894
- Solicitation Number
- 06-116
- Response Due
- 4/21/2006
- Archive Date
- 5/6/2006
- Description
- RFI Title: Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) Request For Information (RFI) Release Date: 4/7/2006 Response Due Date: 4/21/2006, 4:00pm REQUEST FOR INFORMATION NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Issuing Institute or Center: Office of the Chief IT Architect (OCITA) This Request for Information (RFI) is for information and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as either a solicitation or obligation on the part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), its Institutes or Centers. The purpose of this RFI is to help the NIH understand market availability, technical characteristics, and functionality of Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) solutions, tools, or products capable of satisfying the technical, functional, and/or operational characteristics described in this RFI. NIH will use this market research information in its evaluation of potential technical standards to be included in its enterprise technical architecture. NIH welcomes comments from all interested parties on each or all of the questions contained in this RFI. NIH does not intend to award a contract on the basis of responses nor otherwise pay for the preparation of any information submitted or NIH?s use of such information. Acknowledgment of receipt of responses will not be made, nor will respondents be notified of the NIH's evaluation of the information received. Description of Objective NIH seeks information on available Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) technologies that support protocols for safely and reliably transmitting messages or data between information systems as well as a system-programming interface to invoke the communication service. Description of Environment NIH information systems currently use multiple application integration mechanisms for sharing data between applications. Which mechanism is used is based on the specific integration scenario and systems involved. Many of NIH?s systems currently use message-oriented middleware that is incorporated into application server products including Java Messaging Service (JMS) providers incorporated into J2EE containers and Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ). Additionally, NIH has acquired TIBCO BusinessWorks as its strategic Integration Broker Suite and will be leveraging its messaging capabilities in addition to those provided by other products. Technologies of interest to the NIH are capable of the following: 1. Program-to-program (loosely coupled communication services for intra-application and inter-application (i.e. integration) purposes 2. "Store-and-forward" (queuing) 3. Guaranteed delivery 4. Broad platform support (run on many operating systems) 5. Subject-based addressing (for example, publish-and-subscribe) 6. Securing messaging capabilities including authentication, nonrepudiation, and encryption. Description of Evaluation Criteria: In order to support its evaluation and selection of enterprise-wide technical standards for application integration, the NIH seeks information on available technologies within the MOM technical domain. For the purpose of this RFI, the NIH defines the scope of this technical domain as middleware products supporting asynchronous messaging between systems including both queuing and publish-subscribe capabilities. The information gathered through this market research, combined with information gathered through other research and analysis methodologies, will provide the NIH with important decision support information in its evaluation. NIH will base the selection of its technical standards on the following evaluation criteria: Existing NIH installed base ? NIH experience with the technology and the use and adoption of the standard throughout NIH. Fit with existing NIH standards, technologies, and systems ? any known interoperability issues a potential standard may have with existing technology standards. Maintainability/supportability ? the effort and specialized skill sets required to support a technology standard. Cost ? estimated total cost of ownership (based on market research statistics and independent research opinions). Strategic value ? evaluates the breadth of product capabilities beyond the core requirement, and the extent to which these capabilities can be leveraged by NIH to enhance the value of NIH?s investment in the product. Security ? the ability and/or effectiveness and fit of the technology within the NIH security environment. Vendor viability ? the health of the product vendor in terms of its stability, projected longevity, and likelihood it will exist in the future to support the product and later versions of the product. Industrial installed base ? the use and adoption of the standard throughout industry in general (both commercial and public enterprises). Product Life cycle ? evaluates the expected time the product will be in use and supported by the vendor and the ability to maintain currency of its functionality and operation. A longer life cycle is desirable from a training and hardware investment perspectives. Availability ? the availability, failover and performance of the technology as it relates to server uptime, client uptime and network uptime. Reliability ? the extent to which the messaging capabilities of the technology are reliable including the guaranteed delivery of messages once and only once. Performance ? evaluates the throughput of the messaging services in terms of the volume and size of messages processed per unit time based on the support infrastructure. Features and Functionality ? the capabilities provided by the product as reflected in responses to this RFI. Usability and Accessibility ? the usability and accessibility of the product and services according to existing federal guidelines and established best practices. Implementation Effort and Complexity ? The level of effort and complexity associated with the implementation of the product in a production environment. It is important to reiterate that this RFI is not intended to gather information needed to address each of the decision criteria above. Received data will be combined with information gathered through other research and analysis methodologies to support NIH?s overall evaluation. Request for Information: To support the NIH?s market research, the NIH requests responses to the following questions. Please limit your response to no more than 15pages (not including illustrations) in Microsoft Word format, and send to enterprisearchitecture@mail.nih.gov. Please provide your responses directly into this RFI template. All responses must be received by 4:00pm on Friday, April 21. General Information 1) Please provide the following: a. Your organization?s name b. Your organization?s website c. Contact Name d. Contact Telephone e. Contact E-mail address f. Number of employees in your organization g. Your organization?s current annual revenue 2) To what extent are you limited to conduct business under the Buy American Act with the Federal Government? Product Information 3) Given the definition and scope of this technical domain (i.e., Message Oriented Middleware as defined above), please identify any product(s) or solution(s) you offer that fit within this domain. For each product/solution you identify, please provide the following information as available/applicable: a. Product/solution name b. Date of product?s first production release (v1.0, not beta versions) c. Current production version d. Planned product schedule (i.e. future product enhancements, upgrade cycle of the product, Next major release plan) e. Revenue based on product sales f. Number of customers, by private and public sectors, using the version of the product being considered in this RFI g. Please discuss its features, functionality, and capabilities 4) Do you currently have any products, solutions, or implementations at the NIH today? If so, to what extent (e.g., Which Institutes or Centers? Which specific products?). 5) Please indicate the depth and breadth of this product?s (these products?) usage throughout industry in general (i.e., beyond NIH). How many customers (in terms of organizations) are using this product? In what industries? Costs and Fees Structure 6) Pricing and implementation. a. Provide an overview of the costs and fee structure associated with your solution offerings for a large-scale federal solution. b. Provide any training and/or certification program fees. c. Provide any documentation fees and media type. 7) What capabilities are included in your basic MOM product offering? What functionality must be purchased separately? Services 8) Provide an overview of your professional services/consulting services supporting the implementation of your products. 9) Address product support services for NIH, external partners and non-affiliated individuals (i.e., help desk, security support, maintenance, etc.). Technical 10) What kinds of tools are provided with your product for configuration management (i.e. monitoring, administration, security, meta-data management)? 11) List operating systems supported by your solution. 12) List the programming languages for which your product provides Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). 13) Describe the APIs and functionality your product provides in support of customization. 14) List the application servers supported by your solution. 15) List the database servers supported by your solution. 16) Describe any gateways or adapters your product provides for other messaging products. 17) Describe the software and hardware infrastructure requirements associated with implementation of your product. 18) What client-side software is required for the implementation of the tool? 19) How does your product integrate with TIBCO?s BusinessWorks/EMS/Rendezvous products? 20) Describe any adapters provided by your product to support packaged applications (e.g., Peoplesoft, SAP) or other common integration needs. 21) Describe the transport protocols supported by your product (e.g., TCP, UDP, SSL, HTTP, etc.). 22) What support for multicasting does your product support? What multicasting protocols are supported? 23) Describe the features in your product that support reliable messaging. 24) Describe the extent to which your product complies with the JMS specification. 25) Describe the deployment topology supported by your product. Is clustering of messaging servers supported? Is forwarding of messages between clusters of servers supported? 26) What are the high availability features provided by your product? 27) What kind of support for transactional messaging is provided by your product? Does your product support the XA interface? 28) Provide an overview of how your solution leverages current industry best practices or future trends as these relate to MOM and application integration technologies? 29) How does your product(s) or solution(s) address scalability when transaction volumes or number of users increases? What impact, if any, does scalability (increase or decrease) have on cost? 30) Provide a brief overview of the features related to message security that are incorporated into your product (e.g., nonrepudiation, encryption, message authentication). 31) Describe the performance in terms of message throughput of your solution. Please include any performance benchmark information available for your product including performance for both reliable and non-reliable messaging modes, and both point-to-point and publish-subscribe messaging scenarios if possible. 32) Please describe how your product supports federal government usability and accessibility requirements as described in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. 33) Please disclose any known security vulnerabilities inherent in your product(s) and current mitigation plans. NIH welcomes responses from all individuals and organizations on each or all of these questions. Responses are due, in MS Word format, by 4:00pm on Friday, April 21, 2006. Responses will not be accepted after this time.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD
- Zip Code: 20894
- Zip Code: 20894
- Record
- SN01023297-W 20060409/060407220436 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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