SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- FSA NEXT GENERATION VIRTUAL DATA CENTER (VDC) - Attachments A and B
- Notice Date
- 12/5/2014
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 518210
— Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, FSA Acquisitions, Union Center Plaza, RM 91F1, 830 First Street, NE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20202-5405
- ZIP Code
- 20202-5405
- Solicitation Number
- ED-FSA-15-I-0001
- Archive Date
- 6/30/2015
- Point of Contact
- Elijah N. Gross Jr., Phone: (202) 377-3014, Richard Segich,
- E-Mail Address
-
elijah.gross@ed.gov, richard.segich@ed.gov
(elijah.gross@ed.gov, richard.segich@ed.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Attachments A and B A. The Department of Education (DoED), Federal Student Aid (FSA) seeks information from interested and qualified vendors that possess proven capabilities to deliver all or portions of the next generation application (system) hosting services that FSA requires. B. Attachment A provides summary background about DoED and FSA missions and various metrics that depict the magnitude of current virtual data center (VDC) operations. Attachment B provides a summarized listing, by work breakdown structure (WBS), of the range and types of services FSA currently acquires under its VDC contract. C. Under the aforementioned VDC contract, via a single provider and using a contractor owned, contractor operated (COCO) facility, FSA is provided comprehensive (processing, storage, managed, etc.) data center hosting services. Secondary facilities are used for disaster recovery purposes. This VDC environment consists of a mixture of non-mainframe platforms, about 75% virtualized, running on Windows®, Unix and Linux operating systems; 2-each mainframes and a small number of appliances that are government furnished. D. FSA envisions that, to the extent feasible, by migrating to cloud environment(s), it would be able to realize significant operational, service delivery and cost improvement benefits. In preparation to replace its VDC contract, several months ago FSA initiated various reviews. One of these reviews included a detailed cloud suitability assessment, which is still in progress, of the 45 primary and 31 subsidiary system applications currently being hosted in the COCO facility. E. Interim results of this assessment indicate that upwards of 75% of these applications could be migrated to cloud environment(s), ideally using a hosting configuration that includes use of traditional hosting, along with private and public multi-zone (geographically dispersed) cloud hosting. The 25% representing legacy applications, until modernized, were not deemed to currently be suited for cloud hosting, but would continue to use traditional hosting. F. Of the cloud ready applications, about 25% are candidates for potential use of a public cloud. The other applications would ideally, providing all security criteria can be sufficiently satisfied, be hosted in a private community (multi-government tenant) cloud. G. As another significant step towards finalizing an acquisition strategy and plan to replace the current VDC contract, FSA seeks to broadly understand the hosting services, especially cloud provider, market place. Accordingly, to the extent applicable, FSA requests interested and qualified suppliers submit sufficiently detailed informational inputs about the following: 1. Provide one or more supplier points of contact, along with an associated phone number(s) and email address(es). Also, assuming use of NAICS 518210 - Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services, please provide the supplier DUNS number and indicate whether the supplier is an other than small business (OTSB), SB, woman owned SB (WOSB), veteran owned SB (VOSB), service disabled VOSB (SDVOSB) or HUBZONE entity. Lastly, state whether relevant information about the supplier has been entered into the System for Access Management at www.sam.gov and if so, if the information is current. 2. Describe the extent and types of proven hosting capabilities the supplier possesses to meet future FSA hosting requirements, stating what range of full or partial proven capabilities the supplier possesses, to provide traditional, public and non-public (community and non-community), single or multi-zone, and combined or separate mainframe data center hosting. If these capabilities include private community hosting, what types of tenants (government, commercial or both) comprise these communities. If multi-zone hosting is included, how many geographic sites are used and how, e.g., to support distributed production work, for disaster recovery or for both types of purposes. If the supplier possesses some of these data center hosting capabilities, but has little or no actual proven experience delivering the services, please clearly state that in your submission. Also, for related managed services, such as the types listed in Attachment B, state whether the supplier provides these services in addition to hosting capabilities or does not provide hosting capabilities, but does offer related managed services, including identify what types of managed services are offered and whether or not these are proven capabilities. 3. ‘Proven' capability means within the past 3 years, the provider has successfully delivered the stated capabilities it possesses. Clearly state whether these capabilities were successfully delivered in a setting similar or greater to, in terms of magnitude and complexity, the FSA application hosting operational environment. Also, provide general background information about and insights into these successful engagements, e.g., work scope, types of hosting environment(s) used or managed services furnished, total contract value of each successful effort, and other information deemed relevant. Identify client type (government or commercial) of each of these efforts and type of data hosting facility, i.e., COCO, government owned and contractor operated (GOCO) or other, involved in delivering the successful work. 4. If the supplier possesses cloud hosting capabilities, state by hosting environment type, whether or not it is currently FEDRAMP certified, or if not, what actions, if any, have been initiated to obtain FEDRAMP certification(s). State whether these environments are currently used or planned to be used by multi-government tenants. 5. State what capabilities the supplier possesses to deliver, beyond hosting platform operating system software, other types of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software products; to manage these software assets, whether government or contractor furnished; and to ensure ongoing compliance with software license agreements. Also, indicate whether these are proven capabilities and the advantages to FSA of using these supplier capabilities. 6. Provide information about other relevant added capabilities the supplier may possess, beyond those summarized in Attachment B or already identified as future available technologies FSA has indicated it is considering migrating towards. As an example, a supplier might possess unique specialized software capabilities that would allow technologically constrained legacy applications, otherwise relegated to use of traditional hosting, to be able to either fully or partially exploit cloud capabilities. For these added capabilities, discuss the degree of market place availability and whether or not these are proven supplier capabilities. 7. Provide information about government contract arrangements, the supplier already has been awarded, e.g., GSA schedule(s) or government-wide acquisition contract(s), that FSA could potentially partially or fully use to fulfill its requirement. 8. Regarding multi-zone cloud hosting, as applicable, please discuss the key attributes to consider when using this type of hosting and lessons learned from these experiences. 9. Provide details about any recent relevant experience the supplier has had with executing incoming or outgoing transitions or migrations from one hosting environment to new or different hosting environments. Generally discuss the nature of these experiences, highlighting what went well, what were key challenges and primary lessons learned. 10. Currently, FSA utilizes activity based costing and is interested in the capabilities to obtain more granular and transparent data about the hosting infrastructure and utilization metrics. Also, FSA seeks to understand the common pricing models used by industry in delivering different types of hosting and related managed services. Please provide general input on this and concurrently discuss the key factors that should be considered in using different types of pricing models and related lessons learned. 11. Drawing on supplier experiences, along with industry best practices and common standards, provide general input about the most relevant service level agreements (SLAs) and how the use of different hosting environments impacts and presents different challenges relative to roles and responsibilities (RACI). Also, provide input on what types of SLAs and RACIs the supplier deems most important for each type of hosting environment and why? If the supplier has had both experience with application-centric and infrastructure-centric SLAs and RACIs, please contrast key differences between these two types of SLAs and RACIs, highlighting advantages and disadvantages of each. 12. Provide input on the key attributes the vendor believes are important to consider when selecting source(s) to fill future FSA hosting requirements. Provide the supplier rationale for why it sees these as being key or critical source selection attributes to consider. 13. Provide any other related input the supplier feels is relevant that FSA has not specifically requested input on but the supplier believes FSA should take into consideration as part of finalizing its acquisition strategy to acquire future hosting services to replace the current VDC contract. H. As indicated, FSA intends to use the inputs received in response to the RFI to finalize a related acquisition strategy and plan. Potential suppliers are not required to respond to this RFI and not responding to the RFI does not mean if it is interested, qualified and capable, a supplier will not be able to subsequently respond to future related solicitation(s). I. FSA considers industry feedback to be vitally important in assisting it to finalize a procurement strategy and plan appropriate for effectively filling its future hosting requirements. Depending on its close review of all inputs received, FSA may subsequently decide to engage in other types of exchanges with industry prior to formally initiating specific acquisition activities. J. This notice shall not be construed as a request for proposal and does not obligate the Government to solicit or award a contract, nor restrict the Government in its ultimate acquisition approach, nor obligate the Government to pay for any cost associated with responding to this RFI. Please note, all inputs received in response to the RFI, become Government property and will not be returned. K. Please limit responses to a total of 25 pages or less. For narrative content, please prepare using Microsoft Word and use 12-point Times New Roman font and 1.25' or greater spacing. Further, please ensure the content included in this input is clear, concise yet complete, relevant and accurate. This will facilitate reviewers being able to focus on specific capabilities possessed by the supplier. L. Interested and capable suppliers responding to this RFI are reminded that beyond just hosting and related managed service capabilities, as a federal government entity, FSA must ensure all services it is provided are delivered within a framework that ensures all applicable federal government regulatory criteria are fully adhered to. M. Please submit responses and questions to Arza.Gardner@ed.gov and include copy Elijah.Gross@ed.gov and Richard.Segich@ed.gov as a ‘cc'. Request all responses to the RFI be submitted on or before 12:00PM EST, Monday, 22 December 2014. Enclosures Attachments A and B
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