RIMS TECHNOLOGY REFRESH The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission(FERC)invites interested parties to provide product descriptions and capability statements regarding a technology refresh to FERC's Records and Information Management System (RIMS), a large scale document imaging system. RIMS provides electronic access to over 7 million pages of electronic images of documents both via LAN/WAN clients and via the Intranet/Internet using standard web browers. As an important service to the public, FERC desires that RIMS maintain 24 hours-per-day, 7 days-per-week-availability. In addition, FERC desires several improvements to RIMS usability. RIMS is currently implemented on an IBM RS/6000 server, an Informix database with Plexus XDP Storage Manager, about 160 Gbyte of magnetic disk storage and a Cygnet 1803 Jukebox with 4 ATG optical drives. The Web server is Microsoft IIS on NT with a FoxPro middle tier. FERC is considering either incrementally adding features to the current architecture, or adding or totally replacing software and/or hardware platform. Alternately, FERC is considering obtaining RIMS functionality from an Application Server Provider. FERC is particularly interested in the following areas of improvements: (1) High availability and eliminate single points or failure; (2) Increase through put and capacity; (3) Long term storage; (4) Disk storage; (5) Optical Character Recognition and full text search; (6) Remote print function; (7) Remote use of large format images; (8) Microfilm conversion; and (9) Diaster Recovery. A request for Information document with the RIMS Refresh purpose, background, current architecture, areas of interest, and plan is at FERC's web site: http://www.ferc.fed.us/public/admin2.htm. Interested parties may also check out RIMS at http://rimsweb.ferc.fed.us or visit FERC's Public Reference Room, 888 First Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. to use the LAN client version of RIMS. Interested parties are encouraged to attend a technical conference on May 18, 2000 at 2:00 p.m., 888 First Street, N.E. at which time FERC staff will demonstrate RIMS functionality and answer questions submitted in advance. Register for the conference by providing name, company name, and questions via email to rims.refresh@ferc.fed.us by May 15, 2000. FERC anticipate a June 1, 2000 date for submission of written product descriptions and capabilities statements. Posted 04/25/00 (W-SN448338).

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