USDA, Office of Operations, Procurement Operations Division, Room 1547-South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9850

70 -- CONNECT:DIRECT LICENSE FOR MVS SOL n/a DUE 062598 POC Michael McFarland, Contracting Officer, 202-720-4179 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to negotiate on a sole-source basis with Sterling Commerce to purchase a license for Connect:Direct for MVS with 2 concurrent sessions to be installed on an IBM ES/9021 Model 962. The software is needed to provide a high performance file transfer link to the United States Treasury Department. The software must satisfy the following requirements: 1. Provide efficient large file transfers of payroll and accounting data to U.S. Treasury Department systems; 2. Compatible with existing U.S. Treasury Department systems (Treasury has required that all new file transfer methodologies be compatible with either Computer Associates's XCOM or Sterling Commerce's Connect:Direct); 3. Support multiple destinations (sessions), multiple platforms, multiple protocols, and various record lengths without reconfiguration; 4. Provide optional components installable as add-ons at a later date; 5. Provide scalability and support for new customers and clients; 6. Provide general mainframe and client-server file transfers; 7. Provide inter-operability with other methodologies; 8. Must be Year 2000 compliant. Maintenance and/or new releases, versions, etc. of the software shall be provided to the Government automatically. Interested parties must provide written information on their capabilities to meet this requirement. In order to be considered a potential source, respondents must submit clear and convincing written documentation demonstrating the capability to satisfy the requirements specified above. The documentation shall include: 1. descriptive literature with sufficient technical information to establish the capability to satisfy the requirement on large scale, main frame central processing units operating under the IBM MVS/ESA, versions 4.3 and OS/390, system control program; 2. maintenance and technical support to be provided by the respondent; 3. a current contract reference (name and phone number) to substantiate the respondent's capability to satisfy the requirements in item 1; 4. respondent's Government contract number, if applicable; 5. any additional equipment, services, and/or software necessary to implement all requirements. As the USDA is presently using Connect:Direct on other mainframes at the NITC, the respondent offering alternative software will be assessed costs for Government testing and training. Vendors proposing alternative software must provide: (1) on-site installation and implementation support; (2) training for 5 technical support personnel and 25 user personnel; (3) The time (days or hours) required for training will be assessed as an additional cost of implementing alternative products. Further, the NITC will assess a cost for estimated use of CPU and DASD during testing and training at the published rates. All documentation must be submitted by June 25, 1998. This is not a request for proposal (RFP). Requests for copies of a solicitation document will not be accepted. No telephone requests will be accepted. Written responses must be submittedto Michael McFarland, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Operations, Procurement Division, ADP Team, South Building, Room 1547S, 14th and Independence Avenue, S. W., Washington, D. C. 20250. (0170)

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