70 -- REQUEST FOR INFORMATION FOR ON-DEMAND PRINT SOFTWARE FOR EPS

Notice Date

November 3, 2000

Contracting Office

U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Finance Center (NFC), 13800 Old Gentilly Rd., Bldg 350, MAF, New Orleans, LA 70129

ZIP Code

70129

Solicitation Number

NFC-1-R-0001

Point of Contact

Deidre V. Phillips, Contracting Officer, 504-255-2272

E-Mail Address

Click here to contact the contracting officer via (deidre.phillips@usda.gov)

Description

The United States Departement of Agriculture, Office of the Chief Financial Officer, National Finance Center (NFC) is seeking to identify on-demand print alternatives that are currently available in the market place and in use in fully functioning Electronic Publishing Systems (EPS). This information will be used to evaluate the demand-print product currently functioning in NFC's Directives and Analysis Branch (DAB) EPS and to determine options for replacing the current product. DAB's EPS encompasses hardware, software, and connectivity components from a wide range of Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs), and as such, has required an extremely complex and detailed systems integration effort as a major component of its implementation and operation. The NFC is seeking information on any and all systems that meet and exceed its current functionality described below. DAB's EPS Hardware The EPS hardware includes 3 IBM RS/6000 servers with a RAID subsystem, 1 IBM RS/6000 workstation, 10 Sun UltraSPARC workstations, 2 Sun IPX workstations, approximately 50 multi-boot Wintel clients, Cisco network equipment, 8 QMS laser printers, 2 Canon color copiers with Postscript Intelligent Processing Units, (PS-IPU's) and Firey Raster Image Processors (RIPs) enabling network printing, 1 LaserMaster large-format color printer. All hardware is connected by a 100base-T Ethernet network using TCP/IP. The EPS interfaces with and is supported by an IBM9X2 mainframe system, and the NFC enterprise-wide Novell Local Area Network (LAN) infrastructure, and connects with 2 Xerox DocuTech network print servers and a Xerox DigiPath scanning sub-system via a WAN. DAB's EPS Software The EPS software includes Interleaf 7/Quicksilver technical publishing software (including Motif Publishers Edition for Sun SPARC and RS/6000; Motif Developers Edition for Sun SPARC; Motif Basic Edition for IBM RS/6000; Interleaf Quicksilver XML authoring software for Sun SPARC, RS/6000, and Wintel; Interleaf DemandPrint2 on-demand printing software for Sun SPARC/Solaris; Interleaf WorldView viewer for Sun SPARC/Solaris); Sun SPARC /SunOS, IBM RS/6000, and Wintel; iPlanet Internet Web Server Enterprise Edition for IBM RS/6000; Elixir and Xerox Intran Forms Development Application Software software (including Form Builder, Designer Graphics, Resource Manager, CEP Transform, Font Factory, Font Builder, and XFloppy; and Samba SMB file and print sharing services) Demand Print Facility DAB currently uses a demand-print process to provide paper copies of all user documentation (including user manuals and bulletins) to NFC customers at the time of initial implementation and upon request as documentation is updated. In addition to user documentation, DAB prints management directives and other standard text and graphics documents through the on-demand printing process as required. To execute demand-print, DAB currently uses Interleaf/Broadvision demand-print software, which supports the following DAB EPS environment requirements: (1) Multiple input file formats including, Interleaf/Broadvision's, (2) Quicksilver (binary and ASCII formats) and PostScript, (3) Mixed file formats (e.g., Quicksilver and PostScript) within a single demand print job, (4) Interleaf/Broadvision book/catalog-based document formatting, (5) Multi-level Quicksilver book processing, including Interleaf/Broadvision ilink processing, (6) Output to Xerox DocuTech Model 6135 and Model 135 printers with all supported finishing options, (7) DocuSP and Network Server Plus Xerox DocuTech system controllers, (8) Multi-level job ticketing, including job-level job tickets, book-level job tickets, and special-page job tickets, (9) Sun SPARC Solaris and IBM RS/6000 AIX operating environments, (10) UNIX print queue management. At no cost to the Government, we request that any vendor specializing in the area of Electronic Publishing System (EPS), On-Demand print solutions, that will function within the above environment, provide all available information, as well as availability, for evaluation. It is also requested that published list prices and/or GSA, Federal Supply Schedule prices for any or all of these products be provided. This is NOT a Request for Proposal. There is no RFP or SOW available, nor is there commitment to actually purchase a product from this request. There will be no contract award resulting from this effort. The Government will use the information obtained from this effort to determine its alternatives of the marketplace for this capability. All information is to be forwarded to William Dell, IRMD/CRMB USDA/OCFO/NFC, PO Box 60000, New Orleans, LA 70160.

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20001107/70SOL006.HTM (W-308 SN5058R8)