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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF JANUARY 27, 2017 FBO #5544
DOCUMENT

D -- VA Mobile Cloud Services Request for Information (RFI) - Attachment

Notice Date

1/25/2017
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541519 — Other Computer Related Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;23 Christopher Way;Eatontown NJ 07724
 

ZIP Code

07724
 

Solicitation Number

VA11817N1868
 

Response Due

2/6/2017
 

Archive Date

4/7/2017
 

Point of Contact

Brandon Caltabilota
 

E-Mail Address

5-1114<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

VA Mobile Cloud Support Request for Information (RFI) January 18, 2017 Introduction This Request for Information (RFI) is issued for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation nor does it restrict the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. The purpose of this RFI is to obtain market information on capable sources of supply, industry practices, and input specific to the information provided. The Government is not responsible for any cost incurred by industry in furnishing this information. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested vendor's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future Request for Proposal, if any is issued. Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary. All submissions become Government property and will not be returned. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is trying to determine vendor capability to provide a managed VA Mobile Cloud Support solution. The capability package must be clear, concise, and complete. VA is under no obligation to provide feedback to the company, or to contact the company for clarification of any information submitted in response to this request. However, VA may contact certain respondents to seek further information as market research. Instructions for Submitting Questions and the RFI Response: The VA Technology Acquisition Center points of contact for this RFI are Contract Specialist, Brandon Caltabilota and Contracting Officer, Mark Junda. Submit any questions to this RFI directly to Brandon Caltabilota at Brandon.Caltabilota@va.gov and Mark Junda at Mark.Junda@va.gov. UPDATE: RFI responses are to be submitted directly to Brandon Caltabilota and Mark Junda by 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, February 6, 2017. Please limit responses to 15 pages or less. This document contains pertinent information for vendors to provide answers to the questions within. Two documents are embedded at the end of this document with additional questions (Attachment 1) and additional information regarding the current technical strategy and platform (Attachment 2). All proprietary/company confidential material shall be clearly marked on every page that contains such. BACKGROUND The Office of Connected Care (OCC) provides high quality, secure, and reliable mobile applications that aid in providing exceptional health care to Veterans. To support the development of these applications while achieving economies of scale, VA s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has partnered with OCC to establish a Cloud Computing Mobile Infrastructure Service (MIS) solution hosted by Verizon/Terremark. Currently, this solution offers a Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) compliant data center infrastructure that houses development, demonstration, and production enclaves for both Veteran-facing and VA-facing mobile applications (apps). While the current data center provides a data facility and the minimum Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) capabilities required to support the mobile application development lifecycle, it does not offer customers self-service management application program interfaces (API), Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, or commodity infrastructure and enterprise services that are standard offerings from other cloud providers. These missing capabilities have increased the cost and complexity of the OCC s software development efforts and serves as an ongoing source of delivery, operational, and security risks. OCC intends to transition from its current architecture to one that uses modern Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certified Cloud Services that support on-demand elastic resource management. The new cloud service platform must allow for rapid, self-service onboarding of mobile application development teams and Continuous Delivery using automation to deliver software products to Production. Current Installation: The platform has been designed to decouple the service endpoints, business logic, and data sources from each other. This allows for multiple service endpoints, like Representational State Transfer (REST) vs. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and multiple REST resource formats, and also for multiple data sources, such as the Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW), etc. The concept of decoupling data sources makes it easier to utilize the platform for different needs. Additional technical detail is included in Attachment 2 of this RFI. The VA MIS platform is currently hosting three enclaves (two internal and one external): Mobile Application Environment (MAE): A FISMA Moderate enclave including the following environments: Development Integration [Dev-Int] environment, Software Quality Assurance [SQA] environment, Verification and Validation [V&V] environment, Performance [Perf] environment, Maintenance [Maint] environment, and a Continuous Integration [CI] environment. The MAE enclave also currently hosts dozens of applications, several environments, dozens of virtual machines and other components that must remain operational. MAE currently hosts 10 co-located Apple Mac Mini Servers which are utilized in and hosted in the Continuous Integration (CI) environments build farm. The MAE cannot contain any PHI/PII. MAE - current resources Virtual Machines 287 CPU Cores 1078 Total Memory 2231 GB Total Storage 44 TB VA Mobile Framework (VAMF): A FISMA High enclave including the full Application Development Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suite of Atlassian including 2,500 Atlassian licenses and the following environments: Pre-Production [Pre-Prod] environment Production [Prod] environment including the VA External Application Store VAMF current resources Virtual Machines 200 CPU Cores 803 Total Memory 2682 GB Total Storage 30 TB External Cloud Environment (ECE): a FISMA low public cloud enclave for mobile app user demonstrations and agile development with no connectivity back to the VA s network. ECE includes the following environments: Demonstration [Demo] environment, Development [Dev] environment ECE current resources Virtual Machines 35 CPU Cores 0 Total Memory 471 GB Total Storage 6 TB Recommendations on Technical Approach: The current environment is supporting a growing number of mobile apps as they progress through development and testing to production. VA is looking for the best approach to manage multiple platforms, environments, shared services, etc., so that the development of apps can transition through the stages with the same infrastructure, platform and shared services. VA is looking for industry input on the best technical approach to the acquisition, design, and migration of mobile apps to a new platform that can support improved performance. Specifically, VA is looking to address the following: Best method to support applications, with older technology components, in a modern elastic cloud environment. Processes to make changes to infrastructure without breaking the underlying applications that may require a specific version to continue running. The best approach to coordinating the usage of shared services so that changes required by one app do not impact another app. Non-standard application environment settings The ability for app developers to install applications in the non-production environment, while still maintaining VA security policy and change control. Ensuring that the solution adheres to a SLA availability of 99.9%. Ability to allow for dynamic upsizing and downsizing of any system/logical environment. Anticipated Scope of Work The Government anticipates that the contractor will provide a managed solution for provision of cloud-hosted mobile app development, demonstration and production enclaves. The current infrastructure is described in the background section above. The Contractor will design, architect, set-up the enclaves and environments required to support mobile applications. The Contractor will provide the cloud host, set up and test the enclaves and environments, purchase and maintain all software licenses required, provide build management, and support application developers in their use of the environment. The Contractor will support migration from the current hosting environment to the proposed hosting platform and solution. The Contractor will provide operations and management support for all enclaves/environments. The Contractor will be responsible for the complete transition of the current infrastructure, applications, while ensuring continuation of services to the new environment. Industry Questions: Please provide general company information. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code applicable to this acquisition is anticipated to be 541519. The Small Business Size Standard for this NAICS code is $27.5M. Company s size and socio-economic status Company Name CAGE/DUNS Number under which the company is registered in SAM/VetBiz.gov Company Address Point of contact name Telephone number Email address For Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) / Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) firms, indicate whether at least 50 percent of the cost of performance incurred is planned to be expended for employees of your concern or employees of other eligible SDVOSB/VOSB firms. Additionally, if intending a type of small business set-aside, indicate whether at least 50 percent of the cost of performance incurred is planned to be expended for employees of your concern. Provide a brief summary describing your technical approach to meet the requirements. VA is looking for a managed solution with the contractor handling all components of the solution and resolving issues whether they are software, cloud, or network based.   Please briefly describe the tasks that are required in a Performance Work Statement to enable the contractor to provide a managed solution? Should this acquisition be broken into component parts? Please provide your estimate of the tasks, timeline, and Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) to migrate VA mobile cloud shared services from one cloud hosting environment to another. See Attachment 2 for a current description of the environment and list of services. VA has been buying a base amount of storage, RAM, and CPU cloud resources, and exercising options for additional resources when required. Is there a more effective way to support the price expanding cloud resource requirements in a Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) environment: Could resources be purchased by app each app would be priced to include allocated software/cloud/operations and maintenance support costs? OR Could cloud resources be purchased in bundles where optional tasks provide funding for additional cloud resources without specifically identifying the exact resource needed from the long menu of cloud offerings (i.e. dollar unit bundle model)? Often times cloud resources must be expanded, which is followed by the exercising of an option to allow for the expansion. Is there a less reactive contract structure? Another method? What type of pricing structures (FFP vs. T&M, unit vs. range pricing, etc.) are typically used to perform as a Prime providing managed cloud services to the federal government? What information must the Government provide to allow your company to properly scope a cloud environment based on the number of apps/services to be hosted? How will you provide IaaS and PaaS cloud hosting services that meet the FedRAMP requirements for standardized security controls and assessments of cloud products and services? Describe your experience in providing FedRAMP certified / FISMA moderate and high cloud hosted solutions. How does your organization recommend monitoring performance of a cloud hosted managed solution? What are the metrics that should be included in an SLA? How would you recommend drawing the line between PaaS responsibilities and those of the app developers? VA has strict change control policies, and this contract will be looking for ways to adhere to standard change control processes, while also leveraging industry best practices to ensure change control is conducive to the fast paced mobile development environment. Please describe your approach to managing change control and configuration management. Please consider the optional RFI questions in Attachment 1 to this document.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/0c4d05cbbe2fd455f4e661853abee876)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: VA118-17-N-1868 VA118-17-N-1868_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3231050&FileName=VA118-17-N-1868-003.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3231050&FileName=VA118-17-N-1868-003.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN04381149-W 20170127/170125234932-0c4d05cbbe2fd455f4e661853abee876 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

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

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