U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Rm 6875, 935 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20535-0001

70 -- IBM COMPATIBLE S-390 CMOS SERVERS WITH RELATED ITEMS-MODIFICATION SOL rfp-689553 DUE 032498 POC Glenn W. Armfield (202)324-3309 This modification to a previously published combined synopsis/solicitation shall serve as amendment number two, answers to additional vendor questions: 1. Are offerors required to supply the sysplex software? Since the listed sysplex software is only available from one source, IBM, will the government please remove the requirement for offerors to supply the software and procure it separately? If not, will the government issue a letter of agency to the successful offeror to act on the government's behalf to obtain the required software from IBM's GSA schedule or any other available government contract? Answer: Yes, the offeror is required to supply the sysplex software. The Government will issue a letter authorizing the successfull offeror to buy from a GSA Schedule if necessary. 2. It appears from the government's requirements for two of each item that availability is of primary concern to the FBI. Are vendors expected to guarantee 100% availability of the proposed parallel sysplex? If so, what capacity is expected to be available 100% of the time? If not, would the government please state the required availability and the capacity required to be available? Will the government consider alternative solutions, which provide the required availability at lower cost, without the complexity of a parallel sysplex implementation? Answer: The requirement stands as stated. The FBI, based on current and future FBI workloads, require a parallel sysplex environment. The government requires an uninterrupted 24 x 7 operation in a parallel sysplex environment. 3. There may be a superior solution to connecting processors to its networks, therefore, will the government permit alternative solutions to connect the proposed processors to its networks other than Open System Adaptors? Also, are all of the required network connections to be proposed for each processor, i.e., four connections per processor? If not, which connections are required on each processor? In the event of a processor failure are all network connections expected to remain available? Answer: The Offeror is at liberty to provide any technical solution that would meet the FBI's requirement for Open Systems Adaptors as stated in the solicitation. However, what ever the offeror proposes, the technical solution shall ensure network connectivity to all available processors in the event of a single processor failure. 4. How many copies of offeror's responses are required? Answer: Four copies of each proposal are required from each Offeror. (0076)

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