Q A_Amendment_0002.docx

Amendment 0002 NOAA’s Public Cloud consolidated Questions and Answers:

RFP ST-1330-15-RP-0071

Q1: Section B, CLIN 0001, Service Area 5 (page 9): What do “Other REQUIRED Management Capabilities and Tools…” refer to? Or, should this be “Other…tools offered” with a description of these tools?

A1: This means other management capabilities and tools, including descriptions, required to run your solution.

Q2: Section C, Section 4.1.7 Business Support Services (page 20): please confirm that Managed Services offering(s) are relevant to this requirement, and the associated CLIN.

A2: Business Support services, as depicted in Section 4.1.7 of the PWS and Service Area 07 (CLIN 0003) of the Solicitation are relevant to this requirement and should be priced. We do not mention Managed Services offerings in the PWS; however, as a part of the Cloud Professional Services (Sections 4.1.6 and 5.8), the contractor may be asked to provide these offerings.

Q3: Part 1, Section C, #4 Scope (page 13): Will CDN services be required for any NOAA applications?

A3: CDN is not addressed in the Solicitation. The Government assumes you are referring to CDM (Content Data Management), if so; these Services are not within scope of this requirement.

Q4: Part 1, Section C, #4.1.5 (page 16): Does the government intend for the successful contractor to perform the integration of Identity Access Management capabilities and tools with NOAA’s systems?

A4: This solicitation is for IaaS and PaaS (limited) capabilities. However, as a part of the Cloud Professional Services (Sections 4.1.6 and 5.8), the contractor may be asked to perform IAM related tasks.

Q5: Part 1, Section C, 5.7 Cloud Security, #4 (page 23): Two factor authentication clarification – is this separate access from NOAA ICAM?

A5: Two factor authentication is part of the NOAA ICAM (Identity, Credential and Access Management) derived from Office of Management and Budget mandate and Department of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), which integrates the management of identity information, credentials, and secure access to buildings, networks, and information technology systems.

Q6: For CLIN 0001: Service Area 04 – Database Services

a. Does NOAA have any storage size requirements or should this be priced at 0 GB of storage?

A6a: NOAAs Database storage size will vary; revised pricing template will list storage requirements.

b. What type of DB license is required for Oracle? BYOL or Oracle (SE1)?

A6b: The type of license is at the Government’s discretion; BYOL or NOAA will procure licenses from the CSP. Revised pricing template will list versions.

Q7: VM2 specified 4400 MB of storage. Is this the correct specification, or should it be 4000 MB just like VM3 and VM4?

A7: 4400 MB is correct.

Q8: For Task Order, VM1 through VM4, the specifications of virtual machines are not provided. Please provide the type of VM required for each of VM1 through VM4.

A8: Please refer to the requirements in section 4.1 (pages 82 – 84 of 86)) as the government is requesting that the contractor propose VMs in section 4.2 (page 85 of 86).

Q9: Will the Professional Services CLIN include application re-architecture, design, and development in order to provide NOAA customers with an alternative to technical refresh of physical servers?

A9: This solicitation is for IaaS and PaaS (limited) capabilities. However, as a part of the Cloud Professional Services (Sections 4.1.6 and 5.8), the contractor may be asked to perform re-architecture, design, and development related tasks.

Q10: Does NOAA anticipate, as part of Service Area 03, to transfer Virtual Machine images from NOAA premises to the public cloud and then potentially back?

A10: Yes, this will vary by task order.

Q11: Can NOAA share the Service Level Agreements they require (and corresponding RTO/RPO) for the IaaS offering?

A11: NOAA would like to leverage industry standard SLAs offered by CSPs.

Q12: Can NOAA expand on the requirement for Geographical disparity to enable VM affinity?

A12: The contractor should provide the Government with the capability to assign and run VMs from a geographic region or datacenter from the list of available regions and datacenters offered by the contractor.

Q13: Given existing investments made in Microsoft and VMware software and stack technologies:

(a) Will equal consideration be given to providers offering these technologies as the basis for their cloud solutions and technology stacks as long as they meet the FedRAMP and other non-AWS requirements stated?

A13a: Equal consideration will be given to every proposal as long as requirements are addressed.

(b) Will the Government consider mixed stack solutions particularly since there is discussion about multi-tenancy?

A13b: The government is not sure how you are defining mixed stack solutions. With that said, the government will consider equal solutions as long as the PWS requirements are addressed.

Q14: Are the defined bandwidth and Storage Services for all VM’s of the VM type (1-4) under sections “Storage Services” and “In/Out Network Bandwidth (or Data Transfer)?” For example, there are 8 VM2’s, is the 650 Persistent GB per instances or cumulative?

A14: The 650 Persistent GBs are cumulative for all instances.

Q15: Regarding the requirement for long-term storage, do you have a requirement for how long the data is to be housed before it can be removed from storage?

A15: For the life of any given task order awarded under the IDIQ.

Q16: Please clarify the objective “to enable NOAA staff to migrate systems and applications”.

A16: There are various NOAA applications that are not cloud ready and the existing NOAA Staff (FTEs) will need guidance and/or direction in modifying the applications to migrate to the cloud. Please refer to the Cloud Professional Services (Sections 4.1.6 and 5.8).

Q17: With NOAA managing the data backups, do you have an estimated amount of disk space that will be expected to be used to house the backups?

A17: No range can be provided, as this will be dependent on each task order.

Q18: Are there any FISMA high requirements for any applications, or just FISMA low and moderate? If not, when do you anticipate needing FISMA high application hosting?

A18: At this time, there are no requirements for FISMA high systems and we do not have an anticipated date.

Q19: How many applications and servers need to be hosted?

A19: At this time, there is no finite number as this is an IDIQ that will be open to ALL NOAA Line and Staff offices.

Q20: What percentage of applications and servers are currently physical and virtual?

A20: A finite percentage cannot be provided at this time.

Q21: Have you completed a baseline “as-in” architecture, knowing all applications and servers used, and what is your expected percentage of physical applications and servers will be virtualized prior to migration?

A21: No, a baseline has not been completed.

Q22: Is the contractor required to manage just the VM instances, or manage the entire cloud infrastructure including the VMs and also the virtual Operating Systems?

A22: This will vary by task order and can include both or either options individually. Contractor may be tasked with managing the VM instances or managing the entire cloud infrastructure (if Professional Services are acquired).

Q23: Please clarify where the data and applications are currently being hosted.

A23: Data and applications are currently being hosted by NOAA at their various datacenters within the United States.

Q24: How many NOAA data centers will the data and applications be coming from? Or is the NOAA data center consolidation completed?

A24: This question is not relevant to the current requirement.

Q25: Will NOAA be responsible for creating the secure, locked down VM images (templates) or will the vendor be responsible for this?

A25: This will vary by task order under this IDIQ, at times the government will utilizes images provided by the CSP, create their own images, or via professional services, the contractor will create VM images.

Q26: Regarding Service Area 2 please be more specific about the size, IOPS requirements, number of volumes, and any required snapshots for the EBS disks per month.

A26: Please refer to the table on page 7 of 86 (CLIN 0001: Service Area 02) of the solicitation as this provides the size units.

Q27: “Capability to assign and configure Geographic VM affinity” – Please clarify the Government is looking for its ability to provision VMs in a specific geographic location such as AWS US Eastern Region and in a specific data center (AWS Availability Zone) within the region.

A27: The contractor should provide the Government with the capability to assign and configure VMs from a geographic region or datacenter from the list of available regions and datacenters offered by the contractor.

Q28: “Capability to utilize multiple Network Interface Cards (NIC) and Routing Networks simultaneously” – Please clarify what the government implies by “Routing Networks simultaneously” A28: The Government requires the capability to connect VMs to multiple virtual NICs and routing networks simultaneously.

Q29: Each Cloud Service Provider (CSP) prices their services and offerings differently and the two pricing schedules included with NOAA’s Request for Proposal seem to be geared for an Amazon web Services pricing approach and limits “or equivalent” bids to be price competitive. Would NOAA consider revising the IDIQ Pricing Schedule and Task Order 1 Pricing Schedule to be a more generic pricing schedule to allow for “or equal” bids?

A29: The pricing schedules have been modified to allow for an equal product proposal.

Q30: With the wide variety of Cloud Services being offered from several Cloud Service Providers it is extremely difficult to incorporate a Pricing Schedule that would cover all products and methods of offering those products.

A30: The pricing schedules have been modified.

Q31: Would NOAA grant an extension to the current due date of May 11th at 11 am EST?

A31: Extension provided in Amendment 1

Q32: Can Service Area 05 - Management Capabilities and Tools be priced under a unit other than month to align to usage to provide the best pricing available to NOAA?

A32: No.

Q33: Are A) Table of Contents and B) List of Tables and Figures included in the page limit for the technical proposal?

A33: Yes, although we are changing the spacing from double to single spaced requirement.

Q34: Section B, CLIN 0003, Service Area 7 (pp 10-11): pricing for Business Support Services is requested in terms of usage. If we provide these services on a basis other than usage, can we price accordingly?

A34: Yes, the pricing schedules have been modified to reflect this.

Q35: Attachment 4, #4.1 Requirements Description, Service Levels (page 84): should the reference to 4.6 be 5.6?

A35: Yes, the solicitation has been modified to reflect this.

Q36: Attachment 4, #4.1 Requirements Description, Cloud Security (page 84): should the reference to 4.7 be 5.7?

A36: Yes, the solicitation has been modified to reflect this.

Q37: The list of Models for Service Area 1 is smaller than the list provided in the CLIN on pg. 6. Can you clarify what should be included and priced in the TO 1 Pricing Sheet?

A37: The list on page 6 is for the base IDIQ and not Task Order 1. Pricing for Task Order 1 should be included in the Task Order 1 Pricing Sheet.

Q38: The pricing structure required by the solicitation limits competition by not enabling a fair value comparison of various cloud offerings. How will NOAA evaluate other offerings (not AWS EC2) that are bid if the pricing criteria does not take into account an “or equal” pricing structure?

A38: The pricing schedules have been modified.

Q39: Given that an AWS pricing model (with associated AWS SKUs) is called out explicitly in the RFP and the RFP pricing templates, can the Government provide guidance for presenting an alternative pricing model for "or equal" cloud providers that have materially different pricing models?

A39: The pricing schedules have been modified.

Q40: Will a Volume 5 responder be issued an award if you do not receive more than one response for Volume 5?

A40: There will only be one awarded vendor for this NOAA Cloud Requirement.

Q41: Are non-AWS cloud providers able to offer an alternative pricing model in Volume 5 of the proposal, and if yes, will the alternative pricing model presented count against the stated page count for Volume 5?

A41: The pricing schedules have been modified. Price Proposals should be provided in Volume V (5).

Q42: Would NOAA permit an additional optional CLIN to be bid that would permit a “or equal” offering in addition to AWS?

A42: No, but the pricing schedules have been modified to address this issue.

Q43: With reference to the entire RFP, will the Government address the issues identified below and revise the current solicitation or reissue a new solicitation that enables fair and open competition amongst Public Cloud IaaS providers?

A43: NOAA has revised its Solicitation to address many of the issues you bring up.

43a. Not a Brand Name or Equal procurement due to explicit and restrictive brand name requirements for AWS. The solicitation includes a preponderance of brand name citation throughout the solicitation including more than 50 specific references to AWS and/or Amazon Web Services.

43b. Anti‐competitive pricing tables and models that explicitly cite AWS SKUs, service terms, and/or service regions while providing no ability for other solution providers to present alternative pricing models, SKUs, or service terms. This significantly restricts competition as industry is not standardized on AWS pricing models, SKUs, or service terms. Mandatory pricing tables do not permit a fair and reasonable assessment of other solution provider service models.

43c. Flawed evaluation criteria and technical requirements that fail to account for additional costs and/or service fees associated with a) application re‐architecture, design, and development when required, b) the transfer of VM images from NOAA premises to the public cloud and back to Section 5.6, Service Levels, asks the contractors to define service levels for RTO and RPO. Typically, agencies have minimum RTO and RPOs that vendors must meet.

Q44: There is no GFE for IaaS/PaaS requirements. But for the Cloud Professional Services, what GFE is expected to be provided?

A44: If the government orders professional services and expects for the person to solely work on site, it is expected that they’ll provide workspace and a PC.

Q45: Item 5 states, “The award shall consist of a 36 month ordering period on the base award with the ability to include option periods on the Task Orders. The 36 month ordering period will begin on the day of contract award.” However, the Task Order 1 Pricing Schedule has only one base year and two option years. Please clarify.

A45: NOAA anticipates awarding Task Order 1 at the time the IDIQ is awarded. Task Order 1 requires pricing for a base twelve month period of performance and two optional twelve month periods of performance. Once the IDIQ is awarded, NOAA has up until when the base award ends to place an order.

Q46: Please clarify with an example “Unit Price per Month” for various services listed in Service Area 5. For example, “Tool/Capability to permit scaling, allocate storage, upgrade/purchase expanded capabilities” – Is the government asking for professional services to develop or configure services such as dynamic scaling?

A46: No, the government is not asking for professional services to configure such a solution. The government is asking for the contractor’s pricing, assuming that its solution offers this. If its solution does NOT offer this, the contractor should/cannot price it.

Q47: Please confirm services such as “Quality management program”, “Quality Plan”, and “Earned Value Management” referenced in sections: 8.6 and 8.6.1 are delivered through professional services if requested in a task order and not a required service in all task orders.

A47: The contractor is expected to establish a Quality management program inclusive of a plan, at the IDIQ level which shall govern the quality of each and every Task Order. Please see section 6.0 Deliverables. Additionally, this is not delivered through professional services Service Area 06. The items in section 8.6.1 are merely sighted as examples. We expect the contractor to define their Quality management program based on their solution and industry standards.

Q48: Price proposals must generally adhere to the pricing structure established in Section B, Schedule of Prices. The offeror shall submit one original of Volume III, marked as such.” – Please confirm the text should be “Volume IV” and not Volume III.

A48: Price Proposals should be provided in Volume IV.

Q49: The Government has stated the requirements as Amazon or equal, however, the Statement of Work is outlined specifically in AWS terms. In order for this vendor to reply, and to increase competition, we respectfully request that the Government issue the SOW in functional terms rather than in vendor specific terms. As an example, this vendor includes bandwidth credits with each instance and it would be impossible for the government to calculate our price for only compute instances with the current SOW. This vendor offers some unique storage capabilities in addition to SSD's that offer the Government more choice and performance. What level of performance does the Government seek?

A49: The contractor is expected to detail their solution in their response. Additionally, the pricing schedules have been modified.

Q50: Why does the Government request memory in increments of 3.75 GiB and 7.5 GiB? Industry standards define computer memory in increments of the power of 2 (i.e 2, 4, 8, 16, etc). In requiring Amazon specific units, the Government is providing an unfair advantage to Amazon Web Services. We respectfully request that the Government change the specification so that there are no vendor specific or proprietary capabilities which will limit the response.

A50: The pricing schedules have been modified.

Q51: Cloud technologies are changing rapidly and different cloud solutions have various benefits for particular workloads. This vendor respectfully requests that the Government award IDIQ contracts to multiple cloud vendors. This will allow the Government to work with industry to choose the best cloud for a specific workload over the 3 year contracting period. This will result in a lower price & better value to the Government and is becoming a standard practice.

A51: Only one award will be made under this requirement.