Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF MARCH 08, 2009 FBO #2659
SOURCES SOUGHT

D -- REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) - Directory Services Enterprise Tools Solution

Notice Date

3/6/2009
 

Notice Type

Sources Sought
 

Contracting Office

ACA, ITEC4 - West, ITEC4 Contracting, Bldg. 61801, Room 3212, Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-5000
 

ZIP Code

85613-5000
 

Solicitation Number

W91RUS-08-R-0016
 

Response Due

4/30/2009
 

Archive Date

6/29/2009
 

Point of Contact

Jessica M. Williams, 520-533-2117<br />
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) Directory Services Enterprise Tools Solutions DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this Request For Information (RFI) is to solicit industry feedback regarding the development of the acquisition strategy and request for proposal for the Directory Services Enterprise Tools Solutions for Active Directory and Exchange (including Blackberry) Acquisition. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS AND NO CONTRACT WILL BE AWARDED FROM THIS RFI. The Directory Services Enterprise Tools solutions for Active Directory and Exchange (including Blackberry) Acquisition will be transformed into a best-in-class enterprise infostructure operated and maintained by a single vendor. BACKGROUND: The U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) Enterprise Infrastructure Concepts Division (EICD) Enterprise Plans and Engineering (EPD) in partnership with the Chief information Office (CIO)/G6 is requesting an enterprise software management solutions for the current and future Army Active Directory (AD) and Exchange environments throughout the Army. The intent of this request is to formulate an acquisition plan and strategy that will meet the Armys AD and Exchange enterprise software tools requirements, in addition to eliminating multiple, expensive, single license, and stove-piped AD and Exchange software solutions. The Army requires an integrated and automated enterprise solution to manage the connected features of Active Directory 2008 and Exchange 2007; this will be the beginning of a standardized AD and Exchange tool set for the Armys Warfighter. An Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) is a license that applies to the entire Army. The license and software will need to be distributed through a secure centrally managed process. ACQUISITION STRATEGY ISSUES: SCOPE: The Army has 19 AD forests with the target user base of approximately 1.3 million users distributed on multiple networks throughout the world. It is anticipated that the Army will collapse the 19 AD forests into to 2 AD forests. Currently, the Army AD forests uses several different types of AD and exchange management tools. In addition to obtaining one standard enterprise solution, the Army is also seeking to gain efficiencies by establishing a repository for unused licenses that can be shared throughout the forests. ACQUISITION OBJECTIVES: The Army is seeking to provide a standard Enterprise AD and Exchange tools set to a nomadic, geographically-dispersed user base and across a unique collection of computing environments, networks, and security postures. In addition to enterprise service delivery, the Army endeavors to achieve the following objectives: 1. Significantly reduce total cost of ownership. 2. Gain efficiencies via optimization and virtualization technologies, asset management, service management and business process improvement. 3. Increase reliability and quality of common enterprise services. 4. Be compatible with the current and projected Active Directory based Windows 2000, 2000 XP, etc. network operating system. 5. Be compatible with the current and projected Exchange based 5.5, E2K3, E2K7 etc. servers. 6. Be capable of providing and displaying performance, status, and error correction information over the worldwide web. Associated web-based information should include shared views of selected information by root, region, or site. Root, regional, and site views should permit drill-down capabilities to provide granular definition to the server. 7. Real time patches against known cyber threats and attacks. 8. A enterprise tool allow identified installation personnel to mailbox-enable users within their OU, yet mailboxes need to be distributed evenly between the mail stores of each RIA tier. Non-Enterprise administrators are not to be able to circumvent the designed solution through the use of other tools. As such, the primary objectives of this acquisition are to: 1. Minimize up-front tools investments (i.e., pay by license) 2. Support near-term, high priority activities such as collapsing AD forests 3. Migration Tool: Require the ability to migrate objects, including mailboxes, across domain and forest boundaries. Supports migrating from Exchange 2003 (E2K3) to Exchange 2007 (2007). 4. Exchange Management Tools: Require a tool to manage global settings recipients, administrative groups, and tools in Exchange. Wireless Devices: Need a tool that will monitor wireless devices such as blackberries. 5. Be capable of providing and displaying performance, status, and error correction information over the worldwide web. Associated web-based information should include shared views of selected information by root, region, or site. Root, regional, and site views should permit drill-down capabilities to provide granular definition to the server. 6. Needs to automate the account creation and deletion process to improve Active Directory integrity and security by preventing the creation of additional accounts or orphaned accounts. 7. User/group permissions: A tool that will allow for delegation of rights, privilege restrictions and set up rules and policies to add or delete accounts and entitlements accurately. The tool that will allow system administrators to restore or un-delete Active Directory objects quickly and has the ability to use existing snap-ins. This tool should have the ability to list all deleted objects prior to restoration. 8. Provide a single point of administration for both Active Directory domain controllers and Windows-based member servers, to include Exchange 2000 email servers, file servers, print queue servers, and printers. 9. Interoperable with two versions back, current and future Active Directory 2003 to 2008 including Exchange 2003 to 2007 capabilities. 10. AD Monitoring and Diagnostics: Tools that will show the overall health of Active Directory and perform live monitoring. The tool should be configurable to notify system administrators when Active Directory or individual servers are in a degraded state via email alerts, auto-generated tickets, and other methods depending on the criticality of the event. 11. Server/DC performance: A tool that will monitor server performance, analyze and create a baseline. 12. Log management: The ability to easily search, report, and perform trend analysis and long term backup of event and security logs. Securely compress and copy event logs in their original format for long-term storage and analysis. Powerful reporting engine that can sort, filter, and view events Enterprise-wide to meet security and compliance requirements and investigations/inquires without manual scripting. 13. Group Policy Management: Verify and compare changes before they are implemented. Ability to check out policy for editing, ability to approve policy before implementation. The ability to use existing snap-ins and if possible the ability to allow non-domain administrators access the tool at all levels. 14. Tracking changes: The ability to monitor changes to Active Directory attributes such as: group membership, object deletions, setting changes. Tool should be able to automatically notify (alert) SA's of certain changes. Track, audit, report, and alert on configuration changes. Identify who made the change, what object was changed, the original value, and when and where the item was changed. PROVISIONING TOOL: Need a provisioning tool for the Army CONUS Exchange Enterprise. The solution must contain the impact of any Directorate of Information Management (DOIM) System Administrators inappropriate use of the Armys Exchange mailbox system resources to the user population that is serviced by the same DOIM. 1. The solution must prohibit the existence of any backdoor access to the Exchange mailbox system that could circumvent the solutions controls to a System Administrators access to the Exchange mailbox system. 2. The solution must be able to enforce DoD Naming Standards. 3. The solution must provide a customizable web interface for DOIM Administrators or Help Desk support staff. 4. The solution must include the ability to maintain and continue use and enforce security delegation in the currently used tool, Active Roles Direct. 5. The solution must provide for automated group management based on attributes of the Active Directory user object. 6. The solution must provide an audit trail for any changes to an Active Directory object to include those attributes specific to the Exchange enclave 7. The solution should include the ability to manage similar users across any forest at a top level rather than having to manage these users at an individual OU level. 8. The solution must be able to provide role based delegation 9. The solution must provide the ability to specifically exclude certain leadership from mail store limits as necessary. 10. The solution must enforce attribute conformity of an Active Directory object upon new creation or object updating. 11. The solution must auto generate specific values of the AD/Exchange attributes that should not be modified by an OU level administrator. 12. The solution must provide an accounts/users removal capacity that will: A. Remove a user from groups. B. Disable the account C. Hide the exchange account from the GAL D. Move the user to a deletion OU and automate the delete after X number of days. 13. The solution must provide change approval/workflow for specific actions to occur in the directory which will provide automated notification to the approver. 14. The solution must provide integration with MIIS to support any future initiatives of EDS Lite 15. The solution must provide the ability to extend attributes in Active Directory without performing a Schema Extension to Active Directory 16. The solution must be able to perform tasks outside of Active Directory once a user is provisioned in Active Directory. 17. The solution must be able to perform cross forest management. 18. The solution must provide full scale reporting of configuration, auditing, and permissions assigned across an Active Directory forest. 19. The solution must be able to manage ADAM / AD LDS for future initiatives in the CONUS forest 20. The solution must provide a self service option for users to be permitted to update only designated attributes of their Active Directory account 21. The solution must provide a rotation based load balancing model for Exchange mailbox provisioning as described below. Additionally, the Exchange Enterprise Provisioning tool is to determine the availability of any Exchange mailbox database store for future provisioning based on whether the Exchange mailbox database store contains a configurable number of users, and if so, the store is to be unavailable for further automated provisioning. 22. The automated phase of the provisioning of Exchange mailboxes at the Area Processing Center is to be based on the following guidance: A. RIA Tier 1 users- GO/SES, 06, CSM, and HQDA/MACOM/Corps/Divisions Principal Staff. Of the current mailbox database stores dedicated for these RIA tier 1 users, the mailbox provisioning tool is to check the number of RIA tier 1 users per each of these stores before provisioning a mailbox and presenting the mailbox database store with the lowest amount of RIA tier 1 users to the System Administrator as the proposed mailbox database store for the new RIA tier 1 user to be provisioned from. This solution will provide a rotation-based load balancing model. B. RIA Tier 2 users- Target Community: 05/06, GS14/15, Bn/Bde Principal Staff, select staff action offices. Of the current mailbox database stores dedicated for these RIA tier 2 users, the mailbox provisioning tool is to check the number of RIA tier 2 users per each of these stores before provisioning a mailbox and presenting the mailbox database store with the lowest amount of RIA tier 2 users to the System Administrator as the proposed mailbox database store for the new RIA tier 2 user to be provisioned from. This solution will provide a rotation-based load balancing model. C. RIA Tier 3 users- Target Community: The average Army community. Of the current mailbox database stores dedicated for these RIA tier 3 users, the mailbox provisioning tool is to check the number of RIA tier 3 users per each of these stores before provisioning a mailbox and presenting the mailbox database store with the lowest amount of RIA tier 3 users to the System Administrator as the proposed mailbox database store for the new RIA tier 3 user to be provisioned from. This solution will provide a rotation-based load balancing model. D. RIA Tier 4 users- users who do not require a computer to do their job. Of the current mailbox database stores dedicated for these RIA tier 4 users, the mailbox provisioning tool is to check the number of RIA tier 4 users per each of these stores before provisioning a mailbox and presenting the mailbox database store with the lowest amount of RIA tier 4 users to the System Administrator as the proposed mailbox database store for the new RIA tier 4 user to be provisioned from. This solution will provide a rotation-based load balancing model. ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT: The successful offeror will play a significant role in presenting the most efficient Directory Services enterprise tools to the designated Army users. The Government will only consider enterprise tools that are compatible with future and existing AD and Exchange Army system designs in both software and underlying hardware platforms to provide a continuous high quality service to designated Army users. A successful vendor must be able to provide enterprise licenses as soon as possible after contract award. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: The AKO Enterprise Services contractor will have significant responsibility for the continued development of the AD and Exchange Directory Service tools functionality. The Government seeks help in identifying user needs, back-end business application needs, and overall functional enhancements. The Government also seeks the establishment of strong processes to formalize the development and facilitate the prioritization of AD and Exchange improvements using enterprise tool. PERFORMANCE-BASED: Proposals will be solicited using performance-based service contracting principles including use of a Statement of Objectives approach for defining the requirements. QUESTIONS: The Government is interested in obtaining the following information from industry to consider in determining its acquisition strategy and development of the RFP. 1. Common enterprise services (collaboration, e-mail, global user directory, voice, and video/web conferencing). 2. Data center services (application, data, and web hosting; on-site technical support; Tier 1 thru Tier 4 help desk). 3. Security services (remote user access; cross-domain or multi-level security; user/device authentication and access control) 4. Server virtualization management. 5. Back office services (asset management, network operations, capacity planning, and change management) 6. Application, data, and user migration strategies. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Responses to this RFI will be in the form of a White Paper, not to exceed fifteen (15) pages, and supported by a Microsoft Power Point briefing, including notes, not to exceed ten (10) slides. No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this RFI or any follow-up information requests. Submit responses via e-mail to the Point of Contact, Jessica M. Williams (jessica.williams11@us.army.mil) by 3:00p.m., MST, March 16, 2009. TO OBTAIN ADDITIONAL REFERENCE MATERIAL: Please send an e-mail request to Jessica.Williams11@us.army.mil to obtain documents (listed below) to aid interested vendors on understanding the Army network tools needs on an enterprise level: 1. Army Enterprise Infrastructure (AEI) Naming Convention, Version 5 2. Army Centralize Enterprise Network Design Version 2 3. Appendix M to AEI Naming Convention 4. Memorandum Technical Authority CONUS 2006-003 5. Memorandum AD Management Roles and Responsibilities 2004-008
 

Web Link

FedBizOpps Complete View
(https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=71a99675e23629d8a62b5d0d0b216b93&tab=core&_cview=1)
 

Place of Performance

Address: ACA, ITEC4 - West ITEC4 Contracting, Bldg. 61801, Room 3212 Fort Huachuca AZ<br />

Zip Code: 85613-5000<br />
 

Record

SN01763580-W 20090308/090306220847-71a99675e23629d8a62b5d0d0b216b93 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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