SWHARC14Q0051_-_Q As_Final.pdf

Q&As – September 10, 2014 ORACLE EXADATA PROJECT – INL MEXICO SWHARC14Q0051

NO. QUESTION ANSWER

1 Is the State Department willing to be the importer of record?

Equipment must be delivered FOB Destination to a location (address to be provided upon award) in Mexico City. The Contractor is solely responsible to ensure the required equipment is delivered to the stated location on time.

The contractor may coordinate with the INL Logistics section to ensure duty / custom advantages offered to the US Embassy are extended to the importation of the equipment. All required paperwork must be submitted by the contractor on a timely basis and all coordination must be accomplished by the contractor.

2 Is the State Department willing to clear the goods through customs?

ensure the required equipment is delivered to the stated location on time.

The contractor may coordinate with the INL Logistics section to ensure duty / custom advantages offered to the US Embassy are extended to the importation of the equipment. All required paperwork must be submitted by the contractor on a timely basis and all coordination must be accomplished by the contractor.

3 Is the State Department willing to pay the duties/taxes at the time of clearance?

ensure the required equipment is delivered to the stated location on time.

The contractor may coordinate with the INL Logistics section to ensure duty / custom advantages offered to the US Embassy are extended to the importation of the equipment. All required paperwork must be submitted by the contractor on a timely basis and all coordination must be accomplished by the contractor.

Contractor shall be solely responsible for all fees / taxes for which relief is not granted to the US Embassy.

4 Could part of the team be English speaking if there were an interpreter or if the Project manager was bi-lingual?

All installers / engineers as well as the project manager are required to speak Spanish.

5 Section 10 Contractor Commitments, Warranties, and Representations stating “Failure of the Contractor to fulfill any such commitment shall

The following sentence will be removed from the clause.

render the Contractor liable for liquidated or other damages due to the Government under the terms of this contract.”

Question: In that FAR 52.211-11 Liquidated Damages – Supplies, Services, or Research and Development is not included in the terms and conditions and there are no parameters to address the nature or severity of such potential damages. Offeror requests the deletion of language stating “Failure of the Contractor to fulfill any such commitment shall render the Contractor liable for liquidated or other damages due to the Government under the terms of this contract.”

“Failure of the Contractor to fulfill any such commitment shall render the Contractor liable for liquidated or other damages due to the Government under the terms of this contract.”

6 Does the purchasing organization have in place Oracle Corporation Standard Terms and Conditions?

a. This could be in the form of an Oracle License and Services Agreement (OLSA) with a hardware addendum.

b. This could be a more recently termed Oracle Master Agreement (OMA) which usually includes the hardware addendum.

If so, could you please provide the Name and Number of the Oracle Document you wish to utilize for terms when making this purchase, it is required for an authorized Oracle Partner to ship you valid product. If you do not have one, we can provide an abbreviated agreement specifically for this single purchase.

Document Name:

1. Documento de Términos y condiciones de Licencias y Servicios Oracle V.042909

2. Anexo de Hardware

OLSA Number: V042909

7 Will the United States (purchaser) remain the owner of the product and remain the contact for any updates, renewals or maintenance?

The equipment, software, and services acquired will be donated the Government of Mexico.

8 As with many OEMs, Oracle requires all purchase orders to reference an End User License Agreement ("EULA"). We request the government to consider reducing the costs associated with a potentially lengthy Oracle EULA negotiation--as well as enabling bidders to more efficiently and effectively meet the requirements contained in Section 11--by providing authorization to use GSA Schedule 70 per FAR Part

The client to which the equipment and software will be donated is a Government of Mexico federal agency that currently has Oracle equipment and software in use. We expect the same licensing terms to continue.

Refer to response in question 6.

51.102.

9 Required Items (CLIN 001) Warranty, maintenance, support:

According to support required on this solicitation of 12 months and recognizing that warranty, maintenance and support policy from Oracle for hardware and software states that the Warranty support period starts on the date of delivery of the hardware/software. Under that perspective we need to validate that either contracting agency or requesting office agrees that in order to cover the 12-month warranty requested, the support period that we’ll be offer is the standard Oracle support described above.

In case that any additional service or an additional support period is needed, we kindly request that you describe this.

The customer must be covered by at least a 12-month warranty, maintenance, and support period after the implementation of the entire solution.

10 Required Items (CLIN 002) Professional Services:

Due that this solicitation requires that all services must be provided by Oracle Certified persons, we understand that the offeror must submit along its proposal, the certificates issued by Oracle for the personnel that will participate in this project, is this statement correct?

Refer to section 16.5 of the solicitation.

11 3.2 Delivery Terms: Advance Notification required

The Commercial Invoice issued by Oracle for foreign trade is considered by them as a confidential document and is not possible to share with either partner or customer:

Under this perspective, ¿Is it possible to show only the “packing list”?, this document contains all the information related to the products that Oracle would be delivering to the customer. An additional point that we want to clarify is that, if the commercial invoice that you are requesting is the Invoice that will be issued from the Contractor Awarded, to the U.S. Embassy Mexico City?

All equipment and software must be delivered FOB Destination to a location (address to be provided upon award) in Mexico City. If shipment is made directly to this location a copy of the commercial invoice from the contractor will suffice.

The same invoice will suffice if the equipment is shipped from the US and the contractor requests assistance from the US Department of State for importation / customs clearance. The invoice or packing list must include the units, the unit price, the part number and serial number if available.

12 Section 9, Organizational Conflict of Interest (9.4):

The solicitation requests: “The Contractor shall insert the substance of this clause, including this paragraph, in all subcontracts.”

Question: ¿Do we have to include the clauses referred in point 9 (9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4) as part of the technical and economical proposals or, this will be request once that the process finalize and just to be included on the contracts/subcontracts of the awarded offeror?

The clause does not need to be included in your proposal. Upon award the clause will be included in the resultant contract and the prime contractor must include the clause in all subcontracts.

13 15. Evaluation of Quotations (15.4):

The solicitation requests: “If appropriate, the price evaluation preference in FAR 52.219-4 will be applied for evaluation purposes.”

Question: The solicitation states that the clause FAR 52.219-4 will be used for price evaluation process, the mentioned clause refers to the HUBzone for small businesses, ¿how does this clause applies for a provider established in Mexico?, ¿How could these benefits apply to a local Small Business company based in Mexico?

Status as a HUBZone small business concern is determined by the Small Business Administration (SBA) in accordance with 13 CFR Part 126.

If the SBA determines that a concern is a HUBZone small business concern, it will issue a certification to that effect and will add the concern to the List of Qualified HUBZone Small Business Concerns at http://dsbs.sba.gov/dsbs/search/dsp_searchhubzone.cfm . Only firms on the list are HUBZone small business concerns, eligible for HUBZone preferences.

14 15. Evaluation of Quotations (15.4):

The solicitation requests: “If appropriate, the price evaluation preference in FAR 52.219-4 will be applied for evaluation purposes.”

Question: ¿how does this applies for HUBzones businesses with operations in Mexico that subcontracts large local companies that are established In Mexico and does not fulfill the criteria to be considered as a HUBzone?

Refer to FAR clause 52.219-4 paragraphs (d), (e), and (f).

15 15. Evaluation of Quotations

The Contracting Office requests: “To be considered for award, the contractor must be determined to be responsible in accordance with the

Information required to make a responsibility determination does not have to be included in your quotation. If needed, the information will be requested by the Contracting Officer prior to award.

http://dsbs.sba.gov/dsbs/search/dsp_searchhubzone.cfm standards described in FAR 9.104-1.”

The clause FAR 9.104-1 states that the provider should submit evidence of technical and economical solvency to the contract officer.

Questions:

Are these evidences need to be included on the technical and economic proposals?

It could be considered as technical evidence the certifications issued by Oracle along with some “delivery acceptance letter” issued by customer at the end of a Contract or a Project?, and related to technical solvency do we need to include a list of employees from the offeror and their certifications?

For economical evidence, what kind of evidence do we need to present, is enough that we include financial statements, credit lines from our suppliers?

16 General Could you explain the payment terms of the contract to be signed with the offeror awarded?

Due to the Vendor payment terms and conditions, Is it possible to have the Hardware and Software Payment 30 days after the offeror notifies to the US Embassy Mexico City that it is ready to deliver or had delivered the items?

Payment terms are described in FAR clause 52.212-4(i) and other sections in the solicitation.

17 General

Considering that Oracle establish specific policies for distributors in order to distribute to a Public Sector entity in Mexico (known as “Global Due Dilligence” and “Public Sector Addendum”), Is it required that any offeror present this documentation?.

No. This information is not required.

18 CLIN 002, Professional Services: Customer is using:

In terms of determining and understand the complexity of the Database migration process and the effort needed for migrating to the new platform and considering the list of products listed in the document “JOFOC_-_FedBizOpps”, could you confirm if the actual databases are using the security options listed in the document above?

• Oracle Advanced Security

• Oracle Database Vault

• Oracle Label Security

19 CLIN 002, Professional Services

In terms of determining and understand the complexity of the Database migration process and the effort needed for migrating to the new platform and considering the list of products listed in the document “JOFOC_-_FedBizOpps”, could you confirm if the actual databases are using the Oracle Data Integrator add-on listed in the document above?

Yes. Customer is using the Oracle Data Integrator.

20 CLIN 002, Professional Services

In terms of determining and understand the complexity of migration process and effort needed for migrating to the new IT infrastructure and considering the list of products listed in the document “JOFOC_- _FedBizOpps”, Does the offeror have to considerer all customizations tasks that will be needed in order to integrate the actual environments (QA,Test,Prod) and its components listed in the document above (SOA, BPM, BAM, WebLogic, ODI, etc.) with the new environment (Hardware and Software) listed on this solicitation?

Yes

21 CLIN 002, Professional Services

Does the actual environments are providing services to applications Java client-based?, if YES, does the offeror have to consider efforts needed to customize for the new environment?

No

22 CLIN 002, Professional Services

Considering that the contract is going to be develop in an entity related with the INL, are there any time considerations that could affect the

The required period of performance is stated in the solicitation.

effort level and cost of the services?

23 CLIN 002, Professional Services

Does the offeror have to deliver a technical documentation of the Project?, if YES, Are there any specific requirements that this documentations needs to accomplish?

CLIN 003 requires submission of technical documentation. The documentation must be submitted electronically.

24 General

Does the Government of Mexico entity will have availability to work on their site on non-working days/hours in order to accomplish with the delivery date of 90 calendar days established on the solicitation?

It is possible to work on non-working days and outside normal working hours.

However, advanced coordination with the assigned Contracting Officer Representative and client is required.

25 CLIN002, Professional Services

Is there any Networker licenses that the offeror shall provide in order to setup the new backup environment?

The offeror does not have to provide any Networker licenses. The Customer will provide the Networker licenses as required.