SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Request for Information -- Data Center Failover Project
- Notice Date
- 5/23/2013
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of State, Office of Acquisitions, Acquisition Management, 1735 N. Lynn St., Arlington, Virginia, 22209, United States
- ZIP Code
- 22209
- Solicitation Number
- SAQMMA13I0021
- Archive Date
- 6/20/2013
- Point of Contact
- Steven G. Haines, Phone: 7038756746
- E-Mail Address
-
hainessg@state.gov
(hainessg@state.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- PURPOSE This is a U.S. Department of State (DOS) Sources Sought/Request for Information only. Contractors are requested to read the information below and respond accordingly. The responses from this notice may be used as market research to determine an acquisition strategy for a future procurement action. The purpose of this Sources Sought notice is to survey the vendor community for potential sources and potential solutions to the data center failover objectives described below. PARTICIPATION IN THIS REQUEST FOR INFORMATION IS VOLUNTARY, AND NO COMPENSATION WILL BE PROVIDED. ALL QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES SHOULD BE SUBMITTED IN WRITING VIA EMAIL TO HAINESSG@STATE.GOV. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL; THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL/MARKET RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. NO AWARD WILL BE MADE ON THE BASIS OF RESPONSES RECEIVED TO THIS NOTICE. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e), responses to RFIs may be used by agencies for planning purposes, but are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. RESPONSE FORMAT All responses to this RFI must be submitted by e-mail to Steven Haines, Contracting Officer, US DOS A/LM/AQM, at HainesSG@state.gov so they are received by the stated RFI notice response date and time. Responses may take the form of a white paper and/or capabilities statement, but should specifically discuss solutions to the technical objective below. Responses must be submitted electronically, formatted in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel (any version). Margins must be 1" on all sides, to print on 8 1/2" x 11" paper. Typeface must be Times New Roman, 12 point font. Responses should be specific to the request below. There is no express page limitation, but respondents are cautioned to keep marketing materials and non-specific information to a minimum. No responses shall be accepted via U.S. Mail or Fax. RESPONSE CONTENT Responses should be concise, yet detailed, and include the Contractor's statement of interest, capabilities statement, and specific commercial of the shelf (COTS) products (if applicable) that the respondent could deploy to fulfill the requirement if a solicitation were to be issued. Responses should address the objectives below, indicating what type of technical approach and solution the respondent suggests to meet such objectives. Respondents should include in their response any technical considerations, options, exceptions, questions or additional information that they would require prior to submitting a quote, in the event that a solicitation is issued. All responses must include the company name of the respondent, as well as complete address, point of contact information (including name, telephone, and email), and Dun & Bradstreet (DUNS) number and CAGE code. Additionally, the respondent should indicate whether or not it qualifies as a small business under NAICS code 541519 and whether it qualifies as any other socio-economic status under that same NAICS code (e.g. HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB, EDWOSB, 8(a)). If the respondent is a large business, it should so state in its response. The responses received (or lack thereof) in response to this notice may be used as a partial basis for the Contracting Officer's determination as to the appropriateness or inappropriateness of a small business or other socio-economic set-aside under a subsequent solicitation. BACKGROUND The DOS Systems and Integration Office (SIO), within the bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM), is responsible for the design/build (D&B) and operations and maintenance (O&M) of the Department’s data centers. Currently these are located at ESOC West (EW) (Denver, CO), ESOC East (EE) (Culpeper, VA), SA26 (BIMC) (Beltsville, MD), and Old War room 3684 at HST (OW) (Washington, DC). These data centers are managed by the DOS Enterprise Server Operations Center and provide tiered service to the entire Department of State. The centers provide tiered services to over 6,000 servers. The entry-level ESOC service level available to DOS office “customers” is the Co-location level, which provides basic infrastructure services. Layered on top of the Co-location service are additional available service levels, which include Co-managed, Hosted, and Managed services. The Co-managed service provides, among other things, enterprise level backup and restore of systems and data. TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE AND CONSTRAINTS The CIO has tasked the ESOC to expand the Co-managed service to include backup/restore, site level replication, disaster recovery, and high availability services to ensure continuity of operations, data integrity, and data availability for all primary IRM subsystems. SIO wants to find out what types of solutions industry can provide to meet that goal. The primary purpose of this RFI is to document the gap between current ESOC Co-managed services and those services currently available on the market. The Government’s gap analysis will include software, hardware, and staffing considerations needed to accomplish the infrastructure failover-by-system via an escalating hierarchy of recovery point options. Responses to this RFI will help SIO 1) determine the gaps between existing ESOC solutions and vendor recommended solutions, 2) outline anticipated staffing and funding needed to implement any given solution, 3) and make a recommendation for a future offering at a conceptual level for the ESOC Co-location services. Respondents should consider in their response the following DOS subsystems: CIFS (Home and Shared Directory Servers), VMware images, Microsoft Exchange, State Messaging and Archival (DOS Cable Messaging Application), SharePoint, GO (Department remote access solution), Domestic Data Center Backup content, and Blackberry Servers. Respondents should identify assumptions made and information necessary in order to ultimately provide a solution. A suggested approach to defining some of the assumptions in the response is reflected in the table below. Use of these assumptions for RTO and RPO, in addition to the response narrative, is strongly encouraged, to help simplify the SIO RFI response analysis. Availability Service Level RTO RPO Remote Replication Local Replication Load Balancing 100% 1 0 0 Yes Yes Yes 99.999% 2 30 min 0 Yes Yes No 99.99% 3 2 hr 15 min Backup Yes No 99.9% 4 24 hr 8 hr Backup Backup No 99% 5 2 days 24 hr Backup No No ROUGH ORDER OF MAGNITUDE In addition to technical solution descriptions and information, respondents should provide general pricing information (i.e. Rough Order of Magnitude) for each solutions(s) and option(s) suggested in its response. The Government understands that not enough detail is available at present to fully price a solution; however, high-level ROM pricing information will give to Department a very general idea of implementation costs (e.g. a $100,000 project versus a $1 million project versus a $100 million project). Pricing information submitted will be used for general planning and market research purposes, will not be considered binding, and will not result in any commitment, obligation, or award. Pricing information submitted will nonetheless be protected from unauthorized disclosure in accordance with submission markings and applicable laws and regulations. FOLLOW-ON RESEARCH Based on the responses received in response to this RFI, the DOS may continue its market research efforts to gain a more complete understanding of industry capabilities and of the considerations necessary to ultimately pursue a failover solution. The DOS may contact respondents for further information, and may request oral presentations of capabilities from one, some, all, or none of the respondents. All such future communications will be clearly identified as market research only, shall not constitute procurement actions or binding commitments on the part of DOS, nor shall they be used to unduly limit any future competition.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/State/A-LM-AQM/A-LM-AQM/SAQMMA13I0021/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: N/A, United States
- Record
- SN03070997-W 20130525/130523235834-bc13e08cb28b6e14127b04dbdb80c8fb (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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