Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C., 20591, ASU-350

D -- MARKET SURVEY FOR THE FAA VOICE SWITCHING AND CONTROL SYSTEM (VSCS) CONTROL SUBSYSTEM UPGRADE (VCSU) DUE 063097 POC Larry Greer, Contracting Officer, 202-366-6224 This survey seeks qualified, interested vendors to identify options for the FAA's upgrade or replacement of the VSCS control subsystem hardware and software.BACKGROUND: The FAA VSCS Product Team of the Air Traffic Automation Office recently completed the successful deployment of the VSCS digital communications switch at En Route Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) across the nation. During the prototype development and throughout the deployment, VSCS has migrated through several generations of Tandem processors: TXP, CLX700, and CLX800. To minimize deployment risk, no technology insertion has been done over the last six years. The FAA is now considering technology insertion for VSCS through the acquisition of state-of-the-art hardware and operating system software to upgrade or replace the VSCS control subsystem and its approximately 500,000 lines of Pascal code. CURRENT VSCS ENVIRONMENT: VSCS allows air traffic controllers to manage communications paths between their positions and air-to-groundand ground-to-ground circuits. The control subsystem is the VSCS Executive that provides high availability, fault tolerant system operation with communications switch control and air traffic controller position reconfiguration control. Hardware Configuration Item 5 (HWCI-5) encompasses the VSCS Control Subsystem, consisting of a six-processor Tandem CLX800 computer running the Guardian C30.09 operating system. The Tandem computer runs two Computer Software Configuration Items (CSCIs): CSCI-1, Online Operations Control and CSCI-6, Offline Support. VENDOR RESPONSE: Vendors with experience in subsystem upgrades or replacements and expertise in high availability and/or fault tolerant computing, particularly for safety critical applications, are invited to respond to this announcement. A detailed information package will be provided upon request. (0204)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0028 19970728\D-0004.SOL)